Electrochemical synthesis of nanocrystalline CuFe2O4 thin films from non-aqueous (ethylene glycol) medium

CuFe2 alloy films were successfully electrosynthesized on various conducting substrates from non-aqueous (ethylene glycol) sulphate baths. Various preparative parameters such as bath composition, deposition potential, current density, deposition time, bath temperature, etc. were optimized to get good quality CuFe2 alloy films with maximum thickness. Further, these alloy films were anodized in 1 N KOH aqueous electrolyte at ambient temperature to obtain CuFe2O4 thin films. Some CuFe2O4 films were annealed in air at 500 °C for 5 h to study annealing effect on various properties. X-ray diffraction (XRD), IR absorption spectroscopy, Rutherford back scattering (RBS) spectroscopy, optical microscopy, scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and vibrating sample magnetometer (VSM) techniques were used for structural, surface morphological and magnetic analyses. The films deposited on various substrates exhibit the spinel tetragonal crystal structure. The grain size of the film particles was found to be in between 10 and 30 nm. After annealing the magnetic properties of the films were increased significantly due to improvement in crystallinity and surface morphology and change in texture.