No Arabic abstract
Magnetocrystalline anisotropy (MCA) in doped Ce$_{2}$Co$_{17}$ and other competing structures was investigated using density functional theory. We confirmed that the MCA contribution from dumbbell Co sites is very negative. Replacing Co dumbbell atoms with a pair of Fe or Mn atoms greatly enhance the uniaxial anisotropy, which agrees quantitatively with experiment, and this enhancement arises from electronic-structure features near the Fermi level, mostly associated with dumbbell sites. With Co dumbbell atoms replaced by other elements, the variation of anisotropy is generally a collective effect and contributions from other sublattices may change significantly. Moreover, we found that Zr doping promotes the formation of 1-5 structure that exhibits a large uniaxial anisotropy, such that Zr is the most effective element to enhance MCA in this system.
We demonstrate by means of fully relativistic first principles calculations that, by substitution of Fe by Cr, Mn, Co, Ni or Cu in FePt-L10 bulk alloys, with fixed Pt content, it is possible to tune the magnetocrystalline anisotropy energy by adjusting the content of the non-magnetic species in the material. The changes in the geometry due to the inclusion of each element induces different values of the tetragonality and hence changes in the magnetic anisotropy and in the net magnetic moment. The site resolved magnetic moments of Fe increase with the X content whilst those of Pt and X are simultaneously reduced. The calculations are in good quantitative agreement with experimental data and demonstrate that models with fixed band structure but varying numbers of electrons per unit cell are insufficient to describe the experimental data for doped FePt-L10 alloys.
We explore an opportunity to induce and control tetragonal distortion in materials. The idea involves formation of a binary alloy from parent compounds having body-centered and face-centered symmetries. The concept is illustrated in the case of FeNi$_{1-x}$Co$_x$ magnetic alloy formed by substitutional doping of the L1$_0$ FeNi magnet with Co. Using electronic structure calculations we demonstrate that the tetragonal strain in this system can be controlled by concentration and it reaches maximum for $x=0.5$. This finding is then applied to create a large magnetocrystalline anisotropy (MAE) in FeNi$_{1-x}$Co$_x$ system by considering an interplay of the tetragonal distortion with electronic concentration and chemical anisotropy. In particular, we identify a new ordered FeNi$_{0.5}$Co$_{0.5}$ system with MAE larger by a factor 4.5 from the L1$_0$ FeNi magnet.
We synthesized pure and Co-doped (6.25 12.5 at.) ZrO$_2$ nanopowders in order to study their magnetic properties.We analyzed magnetic behavior as a function of the amount of Co and the oxygenation, which was controlled by low pressure thermal treatments. As prepared pure and Co-doped samples are diamagnetic and paramagnetic respectively. Ferromagnetism can be induced by performing low pressure thermal treatments, which becomes stronger as the dwell time of the thermal treatment is increased. This behavior can be reversed, recovering the initial diamagnetic or paramagnetic behavior, by performing reoxidizing thermal treatments. Also, a cumulative increase can be observed in the saturation of the magnetization with the number of low pressure thermal treatments performed. We believe that this phenomenon indicates that cobalt segregation induced by the thermal treatments is the responsible for the magnetic properties of the ZrO$_2$ Co system.
A combination of theoretical modelling and experiments reveals the origin of the large perpendicular magnetic anisotropy (PMA) that appears in nanometer-thick epitaxial Co films intercalated between graphene (Gr) and a heavy metal (HM) substrate, as a function of the Co thickness. High quality epitaxial Gr/Co /HM(111) (HM=Pt,Ir) heterostructures are grown by intercalation below graphene, which acts as a surfactant that kinetically stabilizes the pseudomorphic growth of highly perfect Co face-centered tetragonal ($fct$) films, with a reduced number of stacking faults as the only structural defect observable by high resolution scanning transmission electron microscopy (HR-STEM). Magneto-optic Kerr effect (MOKE) measurements show that such heterostructures present PMA up to large Co critical thicknesses of about 4~nm (20~ML) and 2~nm (10~ML) for Pt and Ir substrates, respectively, while X-ray magnetic circular dichroism (XMCD) measurements show an inverse power law of the anistropy of the orbital moment with Co thickness, reflecting its interfacial nature, that changes sign at about the same critical values. First principles calculations show that, regardless of the presence of graphene, ideal Co $fct$ films on HM buffers do not sustain PMAs beyond around 6~MLs due to the in-plane contribution of the inner bulk-like Co layers. The large experimental critical thicknesses sustaining PMA can only be retrieved by the inclusion of structural defects that promote a local $hcp$ stacking such as twin boundaries or stacking faults. Remarkably, a layer resolved analysis of the orbital momentum anisotropy reproduces its interfacial nature, and reveals that the Gr/Co interface contribution is comparable to that of the Co/Pt(Ir).
In this paper results of scintillation properties measurements of pure and Ce3+-doped strontium fluoride crystals are presented. We measure light output, scintillation decay time profile and temperature stability of light output. X-ray excited luminescence outputs corrected for spectral response of monochromator and photomultiplier for pure SrF2 and SrF2-0.3 mol.% Ce3+ are approximately 95% and 115% of NaI-Tl emission output, respectively. A photopeak with a 10% full width at half maximum is observed at approximately 84% the light output of a NaI-Tl crystal after correction for spectral response of photomultiplier, when sample 10x10 mm of pure SrF2 crystal is excited with 662 KeV photons. Corrected light output of SrF2-0.3 mol.% Ce3+ under 662 KeV photon excitation is found at approximately 64% the light output of the NaI-Tl crystal.