Glass-Ceramic Synthesis of Cr-Substituted Strontium Hexaferrite Nanoparticles with Enhanced Coercivity

Magnetically hard ferrites attract considerable interest due to their ability to maintain a high coercivity of nanosized particles and therefore show promising applications as nanomagnets ranging from magnetic recording to biomedicine. Herein, we report an approach to prepare nonsintered single-domain nanoparticles of chromium-substituted hexaferrite via crystallization of glass in the system SrO-Fe₂O₃-Cr₂O₃-B₂O₃. We have observed a formation of plate-like hexaferrite nanoparticles with diameters changing from 20 to 190 nm depending on the annealing temperature. We demonstrated that chromium substitution led to a significant improvement of the coercivity, which varied from 334 to 732 kA m^-1 for the smallest and the largest particles, respectively. The results provide a new strategy for producing high-coercivity ferrite nanomagnets.