Magnetic spinel ferrite nano particles are of great interest in fundamental science. Because of their ease of synthesis, low cost and stable nature ferrites are better than pure metals. Nano particles possess unique properties, which can be applied in various applications such as microwave devices, magnetically guided drug delivery1 magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)2. Cancer treatment3,4 Nano crystalline inverse spinel cobalt ferrite (CoFe2O4) nano particles was synthesized by green method. Spinel ferrite nano particles can be synthesized by various methods such as reverse micelles5, co-precipitation6, hydrothermal synthesis7 microwave assisted routes8, sol-gel auto combustion method9, ceramic method10,
Eclipta prostata is widely used in Chinese herbal medicine and in ayurveda . The whole plant contains alkaloids nicotine and ecliptine as well as coumarin. The leaves are used to treat fevers, eye diseases, asthma, bronchitis, liver problems and diarrhoea. A dectotion is used to treat cancer. The leaves are used in the treatment of scorpion strings and as an antidote for snake bite.
Due to their extremely small size and large specific surface area Iron- containing transition metal oxide materials are known to exhibit interesting physical and chemical properties significantly different from those of conventional bulk materials.
Cobalt ferrite is hard ferromagnetic material due to its high coercivity, high magnetocrystallline anisotropy, moderate saturation magnetization, and good structural stability at higher temperature. In many technological applications spinel ferrites are important magnetic materials due to their combined electrical and magnetic properties.
In the present study we prepared CoFe2O4 nanoparticles using green method. The crystal structure, morphology, elemental composition, size and magnetic properties of CoFe2O4 nanoparticles were characterized by X- Ray diffraction (XRD), Scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX), Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) and Vibrating Sample magnetometer (VSM).
Structural characterization of CoFe2O4 nano particles
The crystalline structure and phase purity of spinel cobalt ferrie nano particles were characterized by XRD analysis. The diffraction peaks with 2θ values spinel cubic cobalt ferrite corresponds to crystal planes (220), (311), (400), (511) and (440) (JCPDS 22-1086). The crystallite size of cobalt ferrite nanoparticle is calculated by using Scherrer’s formula.
D = 0.9λ
Where λ is the wavelength of the X-ray radiation (1.5406A), K is a constant taken as 0.89, θ is the diffraction angle and β is the full width at half maximum. The crystallite size of cobalt ferrite is 24nm.
