Phenomenological magnetic modeling of Au:Fe:Au nano-onions

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Abstract
A new type of materials, the nano-onions, has been shown to exhibit GMR. These nanostructured composites consist of a nonmagnetic core coated with a thin layer of a bulk ferromagnet with a passivating nonmagnetic surface layer. The nano-onion investigated had a 3 nm Au core, a 1 nm Fe layer, and a 2 nm Au coating; all values correspond to the radius. The materials were manufactured using a sequential reverse micelle technique, detailed elsewhere. The sample preparation method produces a powder sample was cold pressed into a pellet. Magnetic investigation of the sample indicated that the material was superparamagnetic with a blocking temperature of 52 K for particles approximately 8 nm in diameter. At 10 K, the coercivity was 420 Oe, indicating a large degree of order. The GMR was measured over the entire temperature range available. At 10 K, in 5 T, a 1% MR was observed. The GMR was modeled using a simple phenomenological magnetic model initially used to study GMR granular thin films. To more accurately match the physical parameters of reverse micelles, the conventional log-normal particle size distribution was replaced with a normal distribution. The model suggested that the system consisted of an ensemble of 1.3 nm particles with a standard deviation of 0.07. The model does not detect the entire 8 nm diam, rather it detects the individual walls of the shell. In this context, it has shown that a simple phenomenological model can accurately predict the magnetic and electronic behavior of nano-onions.

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