Facile hydrothermal synthesis of ZnCo2O4 nanostructures: controlled morphology and magnetic properties

Abstract

The cubic spinel ZnCo2O4 nanostructures with different novel shapes have been purposefully fabricated in an efficient hydrothermal synthetic platform by just tuning reaction temperature. XRD, FTIR, SEM, Raman scattering, and M–H curves were used to analyze the samples. With the decrease of hydrothermal temperature, the morphology has an obvious transformation from hierarchical microsphere to finally loosened nanosphere, an obvious blue shifting of Raman spectrum happened and the samples transform from paramagnetic behavior to ferromagnetic. The elevated Hc may be attributed to the size effect, surface spin disorder, and shape anisotropy.