Considering the various spinel ferrites, CuFe₂O₄ has gained a prominent interest among materials science researchers both fundamentally and technologically for various applications. Since of Cu²⁺ is a Jahn-Teller ion, it gives the anomalous favorable properties and also exhibits phase transition from tetragonal to cubic. The partial diamagnetic substitution of Cu²⁺ for Zn²⁺ restrains the Jahn Teller effect - changes of stoichiometry reduce the crystallographic transition temperature.

Polycrystalline zinc-cooper-iron oxides were prepared by a sol-gel method. The compounds formation and crystallinity of the materials were identified by XRD patterns, which were recorded on a Bruker D8 Advance diffractometer, with CuKα radiation.

Effect of substitution with Zn²⁺ ions in Cu_1-xZn_xFe₂O₄ system on its high-temperature structural phase transitions have been investigated on the synchrotron beamline B2 at HASYLAB (DESY, Hamburg). The structure refinement of all polymorphs using Rietveld profile analysis, based on the synchrotron X-ray data, were performed. The cation distribution of Cu_1-xZn_xFe₂O₄ samples derived from Rietveld analysis indicates that Cu ions occupy the octahedral B-sites, so tetragonal distortion in these materials is attributed to the cooperative distortion that driven by the octahedral Cu²⁺ (3d⁹). As Zn²⁺ substitutes Cu²⁺ in these disordered spinels, it replaces Fe³⁺ at A-site. This is due to the site preference of Zn²⁺, which leads to transfer Fe³⁺ from A-sites to B-sites and in turns a crystallographic transformation from tetragonal to cubic structure is occurred. This transformation is attributed to the decrease of the concentration of octahedrally coordinated JT ions  in the host structure and leads to the presence of high-symmetry phase.

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