Magnetic, optical, structural and thermal properties of copper ferrite nanostructured synthesized by mechanical alloying

CuFe 2 O 4 spinel nanostructured were elaborated by mechanical alloying technique from Cu, Cu 2 O and Fe 2 O 3 under controlled atmosphere with different milling times at room temperature. The CuFe 2 O 4 spinel crystalline has a body‐centred tetragonal structure at low temperatures with lattice parameters a  ≅ 0.582 nm and c  ≅ 0.869 nm and face‐centred cubic structure at high temperatures with lattice parameter a  ≅ 0.842 nm. The average crystallite size and lattice strain determined from X‐ray diffraction for CuFe 2 O 4 are 22.12 ± 5.47 nm and 0.781 ± 0.082 %, respectively. The FTIR‐ATR spectra of the samples shows that the vibration around of 400–1000 cm −1 corresponds to the CuFe 2 O 4 absorbed at octahedral and tetrahedral sites. The mechanical alloying process results in CuFe 2 O 4 agglomerated in clusters, which radically change their shape during milling time. Differential scanning calorimetry analysis shows two additional endothermic peaks around 715–781 °C and 863–957 °C, the first peak might be affected to the formation of Cu‐Fe‐O and the second peak may correspond to the transformation of CuFe 2 O 4 from tetragonal to cubic structure. CuFe 2 O 4 samples milled until 20 h are ferromagnetic at room temperature with saturation magnetization increasing from 29.8 to 59.6 emu/g with increasing the milling time. The coercivity decreases 254 Oe up to 230 Oe when the milling time increases from 0 to 20h.