Elucidating Individual Magnetic Contributions in Bi-Magnetic Fe 3 O 4 /Mn 3 O 4 Core/Shell Nanoparticles by Polarized Powder Neutron Diffraction.

Heterogeneous bi-magnetic nanostructured systems have had a sustained interest during the last decades owing to their unique magnetic properties and the wide range of derived potential applications. However, elucidating the details of their magnetic properties can be rather complex. Here, a comprehensive study of Fe ₃ O ₄ /Mn ₃ O ₄ core/shell nanoparticles using polarized neutron powder diffraction, which allows disentangling the magnetic contributions of each of the components, is presented. The results show that while at low fields the Fe ₃ O ₄ and Mn ₃ O ₄ magnetic moments averaged over the unit cell are antiferromagnetically coupled, at high fields, they orient parallel to each other. This magnetic reorientation of the Mn ₃ O ₄ shell moments is associated with a gradual evolution with the applied field of the local magnetic susceptibility from anisotropic to isotropic. Additionally, the magnetic coherence length of the Fe ₃ O ₄ cores shows some unusual field dependence due to the competition between the antiferromagnetic interface interaction and the Zeeman energies. The results demonstrate the great potential of the quantitative analysis of polarized neutron powder diffraction for the study of complex multiphase magnetic materials.
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