Structural, dielectric, electrical and modulus spectroscopic characteristics of CoFeCuO4 spinel ferrite nanoparticles

[Display omitted] •CoFeCuO4 prepared by sol–gel method adopts a cubic symmetry with Fd3-m space group.•The temperature and frequency dependence of dielectric constants was investigated.•Dielectric analysis reveals a single thermally activated conduction mechanism.•Substitution of Fe by Cu increases ac conductivity and decreases the dielectric loss.•The mechanism responsible of electrical conductivity is related to the relaxation one. In this work, our focus is upon the synthesis of material having useful and less expensive high frequency applications. For this purpose, we used the sol–gel method to elaborate the Cu-substituted CoFe2O4. The XRD analysis confirmed the single-phase cubic spinel structure with the Fd3-m space group. The grain size distribution was traced through different methods. It confirms the nano-metric size of the compound. To elaborate the electrical and dielectric properties of the prepared sample, impedance spectroscopy was invested. It demonstrated the relaxing nature of our material and indicated that the substitution of Fe by Cu on CoFe2O4 increases the ac conductivity and decreases the dielectric loss especially at higher frequencies; the low loss values indicate the potential of these ferrites for high frequency applications at temperatures close to the room temperature. The activation energy value was estimated based on the relaxation time and the conductance curves analysis, the found value is around 0.33 eV which confirms the semiconductor character of our compound and its capacity to achieve a significant gain in productivity. Moreover, this obtained value indicates the relationship between the electrical conductivity mechanism and the relaxation one.