Abstract:
The present work reports on the relatively higher saturation magnetization values of Fe/Fe3O4 nanocomposites.
For example, the nanocomposites of Fe obtained after milling for 10 h with 5, 10 and 15 wt% of Fe3O4 had displayed saturation
magnetization values of 210, 238 and 216 Am2 kg−1, respectively, in contrast to 218 Am2 kg−1 of bulk Fe. Similarly, the
maximum magnetization values for the nanocomposites after 20 and 30 h of milling were 215 and 190 Am2 kg−1 for the
sample containing 5 and 15 wt% of Fe3O4, respectively. The values of HC and Mr suggest that nanocomposites exhibit
soft ferromagnetic behaviour. The ball milling also reduced the crystallite and particle size of Fe from microndimension to
nanometres. This was confirmed from X-ray diffraction, transmission electron microscopy and scanning electron microscopy
analyses. The crystallite size of pure Fe decreased to 35, 20 and 19 nm, respectively, for the samples havin
