  Nanocrystalline Al-doped nickel ferrite powders have been synthesized by
sol-gel auto-ignition method and the effect of non-magnetic aluminum content on
the structural and magnetic properties has been studied. The X-ray diffraction
(XRD) revealed that the powders obtained are single phase with inverse spinel
structure. The calculated grain sizes from XRD data have been verified using
transmission electron microscopy (TEM). TEM photographs show that the powders
consist of nanometer-sized grains. It was observed that the characteristic
grain size decreases from 29 to 6 nm as the non-magnetic Al content increases,
which was attributed to the influence of non-magnetic Al concentration on the
grain size. Magnetic hysteresis loops were measured at room temperature with a
maximum applied magnetic field of 1T. As aluminum content increases, the
measured magnetic hysteresis curves become more and more narrow and the
saturation magnetization and remanent magnetization both decreased. The
reduction of agnetization compared to bulk is a consequence of spin
non-collinearity. Further reduction of magnetization with increase of aluminum
content is caused by non-magnetic Al^{3+} ions and weakened interaction between
sublattices. This, as well as the decrease in hysteresis was understood in
terms of the decrease in particle size.
