Modeling the specific surface area of doped spinel ferrite nanomaterials using hybrid intelligent computational method

Spinel ferrites nanomaterials are magnetic semiconductors with excellent chemical, magnetic, electrical, and optical properties which have rendered the materials useful in many technological driven applications such as solar hydrogen production, data storage, magnetic sensing, converters, inductors, spintronics, and catalysts. The surface area of these nanomaterials contributes significantly to their targeted applications as well as the observed physical and chemical features. Experimental doping has shown a great potential in enhancing and tuning the specific surface area of spinel ferrite nanomaterials while the attributed experimental challenges call for viable theoretical model that can estimate the surface area of doped spinel ferrite nanomaterials with high degree of precision. This work develops stepwise regression (STWR) and hybrid genetic algorithm-based support vector regression (GBSVR) intelligent model for estimating specific surface area of doped spinel ferrite nanomaterials using lattice parameter and the size of nanoparticle as descriptors to the models. The developed hybrid GBSVR model performs better than STWR model with the performance improvement of 7.51% and 22.68%, respectively, using correlation coefficient and root mean square error as performance metrics when validated with experimentally measured specific surface area of doped spinel ferrite nanomaterials. The developed GBSVR model investigates the influence of nickel, yttrium, and lanthanum nanoparticles on the specific surface area of different classes of spinel ferrite nanomaterials, and the obtained results agree excellently well with the measured values. The accuracy and precision characterizing the developed model would be of immense importance in enhancing specific surface area of doped spinel ferrite nanomaterial prediction with circumvention of experimental stress coupled with reduced cost.