Surface effects in nanoparticles: application to maghemite $\gamma$-Fe_{2}O_{3}

The finite size and surface roughness effects on the magnetization of NiO nanoparticles is investigated. A large magnetic moment arises for an antiferromagnetic nanoparticle due to these effects. The magnetic moment without the surface roughness has a non-monotonic and oscillatory dependence on $R$, the size of the particles, with the amplitude of the fluctuations varying linearly with $R$. The geometry of the particle also matters a lot in the calculation of the net magnetic...

We present a detailed study of the magnetic behavior of iron-oxide (gamma-Fe2O3 and Fe3O4) nanoparticles constituents of ferrofluids (FF's) with average particle sizes <d> = 2.5 and 10 nm. The particles were dispersed in the frozen liquid carrier (pure FF) and in a frozen lyotropic liquid crystalline matrix in the nematic phase or ferronematic (FN) (ferrolyomesophase). Both FF and FN phases displayed superparamagnetic (SPM) behaviour at room temperature, with blocking tempera...

Monte Carlo simulation based on Metropolis algorithm has been used with a great success to analyze the dynamic phase transition properties of a single spherical core-shell nanoparticle system with a spin-3/2 core surrounded by a spin-1 shell layer with antiferromagnetic interface coupling under the influence of a time dependent oscillating magnetic filed. It has been found that the dynamic phase boundaries strongly depend on the Hamiltonian parameters such as for the high amp...

A general method for the quantification of dipolar interactions in assemblies of nanoparticles has been developed from a model sample constituted by magnetite nanoparticles of 5 nm in diameter, in powder form with oleic acid as a surfactant so that the particles were solely separated from each other through an organic layer of about 1 nm in thickness. This quantification is based on the comparison of the distribution of energy barriers for magnetization reversal obtained from...

The observation of unusually large ferromagnetism in the nanoparticles of doped oxides and enhanced ferromagnetic tendencies in manganite nanoparticles have been in focus recently. For the transition metal-doped oxide nanoparticles a phenomenological `charge transfer ferromagnetism' model is recently proposed by Coey et al. From a microscopic calculation with charge transfer between the defect band and mixed valent dopants, acting as reservoir, we show how the unusually high ...

We investigate the effect of anisotropy and weak dipolar interactions on the magnetization of an assembly of nanoparticles with distributed magnetic moments, i.e., assembly of magnetic nanoparticles in the one-spin approximation, with textured or random anisotropy. The magnetization of a free particle is obtained either by a numerical calculation of the partition function or analytically in the low and high field regimes, using perturbation theory and the steepest-descent a...

In this paper we investigate the superspin glass behavior of a concentrated assembly of interacting maghemite nanoparticles and compare it to that of canonical atomic spin glass systems. ac versus temperature and frequency measurements show evidence of a superspin glass transition taking place at low temperature. In order to fully characterize the superspin glass phase, the aging behavior of both the thermo-remanent magnetization (TRM) and ac susceptibility has been investiga...

We have studied the magnetic behavior of dextran-coated magnetite (Fe$_3$O$_4$) nanoparticles with median particle size $\left<d\right>=8$ $nm$. Magnetization curves and in-field M\"ossbauer spectroscopy measurements showed that the magnetic moment $M_S$ of the particles was much smaller than the bulk material. However, we found no evidence of magnetic irreversibility or non-saturating behavior at high fields, usually associated to spin canting. The values of magnetic anisotr...

We investigate the thermal activated magnetisation reversal in a single ferromagnetic nanoparticle with uniaxial anisotropy using Monte Carlo simulations. The aim of this work is to reproduce the reversal magnetisation by uniform rotation at very low temperature in the high energy barrier hypothesis, that is to realize the N\'eel-Brown model. For this purpose we have considered a simple cubic nanoparticle where each site is occupied by a classical Heisenberg spin. The Hamilto...

A nucleation picture of magnetization switching in single-domain ferromagnetic nanoparticles with high local anisotropy is discussed. Relevant aspects of nucleation theory are presented, stressing the effects of the particle size on the switching dynamics. The theory is illustrated by Monte Carlo simulations and compared with experiments on single particles.