No Arabic abstract
The utility of nanoscaled ferromagnetic particles requires both stabilized moments and maximized switching speeds. During reversal, the spatial modulation of the nanoparticle magnetization evolves in time, and the energy differences between each new configuration are accomodated by the absorption or emission spin waves with different wavelengths and energy profiles. The switching speed is limited by how quickly this spin wave energy is dissipated. We present here the first observation of dispersing spin waves in a nanoscaled system, using neutron scattering to detect spin waves in the CoO shells of exchange biased Co core- CoO shell nanoparticles. Their dispersion is little affected by finite size effects, but the spectral weight shifts to energies and wave vectors which increase with decreasing system size. Core-shell coupling leads to a substantial enhancement of the CoO spin wave population above its conventional thermal level, suggesting a new mechanism for dissipating core switching energy.
Using microemulsion methods, CoO-Pt core-shell nanoparticles (NPs), with diameters of nominally 4 nm, were synthesized and characterized by high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM) and a suite of x-ray spectroscopies, including diffraction (XRD), absorption (XAS), absorption near-edge structure (XANES), and extended absorption fine structure (EXAFS), which confirmed the existence of CoO cores and pure Pt surface layers. Using a commercial magnetometer, the ac and dc magnetic properties were investigated over a range of temperature (2 K $leq$ T $leq$ 300 K), magnetic field ($leq$ 50 kOe), and frequency ($leq$ 1 kHz). The data indicate the presence of two different magnetic regimes whose onsets are identified by two maxima in the magnetic signals, with a narrow maximum centered at 6 K and a large one centered at 37 K. The magnetic responses in these two regimes exhibit different frequency dependences, where the maximum at high temperature follows a Vogel-Fulcher law, indicating a superparamagnetic (SPM) blocking of interacting nanoparticle moments and the maximum at low temperature possesses a power law response characteristic of a collective freezing of the nanoparticle moments in a superspin glass (SSG) state. This co-existence of blocking and freezing behaviors is consistent with the nanoparticles possessing an antiferromagnetically ordered core, with an uncompensated magnetic moment, and a magnetically disordered interlayer between CoO core and Pt shell.
A temperature dependent coherent magnetization reversal model is proposed for size-distributed assemblies of ferromagnetic nanoparticles and ferromagnetic-antiferromagnetic core-shell nanoparticles. The nanoparticles are assumed to be of uniaxial anisotropy and all aligned along their easy axis. The thermal dependence is included by considering thermal fluctuations, implemented via the Neel-Arrhenius theory. Thermal and angular dependence of magnetization reversal loops, coercive field and exchange-bias field are obtained, showing that F-AF size-distributed exchange-coupled nanoparticles exhibit temperature-dependent asymmetric magnetization reversal. Also, non-monotonic evolutions of He and Hc with T are demonstrated. The angular dependence of Hc with T exhibits a complex behavior, with the presence of an apex, whose position and amplitude are strongly T dependent. The angular dependence of He with T exhibits complex behaviors, which depends on the AF anisotropy and exchange coupling. The resulting angular behavior demonstrates the key role of the size distribution and temperature in the magnetic response of nanoparticles.
We present an atomistic model of a single nanoparticle with core/shell structure that takes into account its lattice strucutre and spherical geometry, and in which the values of microscopic parameters such as anisotropy and exchange constants can be tuned in the core, shell and interfacial regions. By means of Monte Carlo simulations of the hysteresis loops based on this model, we have determined the range of microscopic parameters for which loop shifts after field cooling can be observed. The study of the magnetic order of the interfacial spins for different particles sizes and values of the interfacial exchange coupling have allowed us to correlate the appearance of loop asymmetries and vertical displacements to the existence of a fraction of uncompensated spins at the shell interface that remain pinned during field cycling, offering new insight on the microscopic origin of the experimental phenomenology.
Some of the main experimental observations related to the occurrence of exchange bias in magnetic systems are reviewed, focusing the attention on the peculiar phenomenology associated to nanoparticles with core/shell structure as compared to thin film bilayers. The main open questions posed by the experimental observations are presented and contrasted to existing theories and models for exchange bias formulated up to date. We also present results of simulations based on a simple model of a core/shell nanoparticle in which the values of microscopic parameters such as anisotropy and exchange constants can be tuned in the core, shell and at the interfacial regions, offering new insight on the microscopic origin of the experimental phenomenology. A detailed study of the of the magnetic order of the interfacial spins shows compelling evidence that most of the experimentally observed effects can be qualitatively accounted within the context of this model and allows also to quantify the magnitude of the loop shifts with striking agreement with the macroscopic observed values.
Coupling at the interface of core/shell magnetic nanoparticles is known to be responsible for the exchange bias (EB) and the relative sizes of core and shell components are supposed to influence the associated phenomenology. In this work, we have prepared core/shell structured nanoparticles with the total averaged diameter around $sim$ 27 nm and a wide range of shell thicknesses through the controlled oxidation of Co nanoparticles well dispersed in an amorphous silica host. Structural characterizations give compelling evidence of the formation of Co$_3$O$_4$ crystallite phase at the shells surrounding the Co core. Field cooled hysteresis loops display nonmonotonous dependence of the exchange bias $H_E$ and coercive $H_C$ fields, that become maximum for a sample with an intermediate shell thickness, at which lattice strain is also maximum for both the phases. Results of our atomistic Monte Carlo simulations of the particles with the same size and compositions as in experiments are in agreement with the experimental observations and have allowed us to identify a change in the contribution of the interfacial surface spins to the magnetization reversal giving rise to the maximum in $H_E$ and $H_C$.