Nanomagnet

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In magnetism, a nanomagnet is a nanoscopic scale system that presents spontaneous magnetic order (magnetization) at zero applied magnetic field (remanence).

The small size of nanomagnets prevents the formation of magnetic domains (see single domain (magnetic)). The magnetization dynamics of sufficiently small nanomagnets at low temperatures, typically single-molecule magnets, presents quantum phenomena, such as macroscopic spin tunnelling. At larger temperatures, the magnetization undergoes random thermal fluctuations (superparamagnetism) which present a limit for the use of nanomagnets for permanent information storage.

Canonical examples of nanomagnets are grains [1] [2] of ferromagnetic metals (iron, cobalt, and nickel) and single-molecule magnets. [3] The vast majority of nanomagnets feature transition metal (titanium, vanadium, chromium, manganese, iron, cobalt or nickel) or rare earth (Gadolinium, Europium, Erbium) magnetic atoms.

The ultimate limit in miniaturization of nanomagnets was achieved in 2016: individual Ho atoms present remanence when deposited on an atomically thin layer of MgO coating a silver film was reported by scientists from EPFL and ETH, in Switzerland. [4] Before that, the smallest nanomagnets reported, attending to the number of magnetic atoms, were double decker phthalocyanes molecules with only one rare-earth atom. [5] Other systems presenting remanence are nanoengineered Fe chains, deposited on Cu2N/Cu(100) surfaces, showing either Neel [6] or ferromagnetic ground states [7] with in systems with as few as 5 Fe atoms with S=2. Canonical single-molecule magnets are the so-called Mn12 and Fe8 systems, with 12 and 8 transition metal atoms each and both with spin 10 (S = 10) ground states.

The phenomenon of zero field magnetization requires three conditions:

  1. A ground state with finite spin
  2. A magnetic anisotropy energy barrier
  3. Long spin relaxation time.

Conditions 1 and 2, but not 3, have been demonstrated in a number of nanostructures, such as nanoparticles, [8] nanoislands, [9] and quantum dots [10] [11] with a controlled number of magnetic atoms (between 1 and 10).

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ferromagnetism</span> Mechanism by which materials form into and are attracted to magnets

Ferromagnetism is a property of certain materials that results in a significant, observable magnetic permeability, and in many cases, a significant magnetic coercivity, allowing the material to form a permanent magnet. Ferromagnetic materials are familiar metals that are noticeably attracted to a magnet, a consequence of their substantial magnetic permeability. Magnetic permeability describes the induced magnetization of a material due to the presence of an external magnetic field. This temporarily induced magnetization, for example, inside a steel plate, accounts for its attraction to the permanent magnet. Whether or not that steel plate acquires a permanent magnetization itself depends not only on the strength of the applied field but on the so-called coercivity of the ferromagnetic material, which can vary greatly.

Spintronics, also known as spin electronics, is the study of the intrinsic spin of the electron and its associated magnetic moment, in addition to its fundamental electronic charge, in solid-state devices. The field of spintronics concerns spin-charge coupling in metallic systems; the analogous effects in insulators fall into the field of multiferroics.

Remanence or remanent magnetization or residual magnetism is the magnetization left behind in a ferromagnetic material after an external magnetic field is removed. Colloquially, when a magnet is "magnetized", it has remanence. The remanence of magnetic materials provides the magnetic memory in magnetic storage devices, and is used as a source of information on the past Earth's magnetic field in paleomagnetism. The word remanence is from remanent + -ence, meaning "that which remains".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Magnon</span> Spin 1 quasiparticle; quantum of a spin wave

A magnon is a quasiparticle, a collective excitation of the spin structure of an electron in a crystal lattice. In the equivalent wave picture of quantum mechanics, a magnon can be viewed as a quantized spin wave. Magnons carry a fixed amount of energy and lattice momentum, and are spin-1, indicating they obey boson behavior.

Magnetic semiconductors are semiconductor materials that exhibit both ferromagnetism and useful semiconductor properties. If implemented in devices, these materials could provide a new type of control of conduction. Whereas traditional electronics are based on control of charge carriers, practical magnetic semiconductors would also allow control of quantum spin state. This would theoretically provide near-total spin polarization, which is an important property for spintronics applications, e.g. spin transistors.

A single-molecule magnet (SMM) is a metal-organic compound that has superparamagnetic behavior below a certain blocking temperature at the molecular scale. In this temperature range, a SMM exhibits magnetic hysteresis of purely molecular origin. In contrast to conventional bulk magnets and molecule-based magnets, collective long-range magnetic ordering of magnetic moments is not necessary.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Spin ice</span>

A spin ice is a magnetic substance that does not have a single minimal-energy state. It has magnetic moments (i.e. "spin") as elementary degrees of freedom which are subject to frustrated interactions. By their nature, these interactions prevent the moments from exhibiting a periodic pattern in their orientation down to a temperature much below the energy scale set by the said interactions. Spin ices show low-temperature properties, residual entropy in particular, closely related to those of common crystalline water ice. The most prominent compounds with such properties are dysprosium titanate (Dy2Ti2O7) and holmium titanate (Ho2Ti2O7). The orientation of the magnetic moments in spin ice resembles the positional organization of hydrogen atoms (more accurately, ionized hydrogen, or protons) in conventional water ice (see figure 1).

The spin Hall effect (SHE) is a transport phenomenon predicted by Russian physicists Mikhail I. Dyakonov and Vladimir I. Perel in 1971. It consists of the appearance of spin accumulation on the lateral surfaces of an electric current-carrying sample, the signs of the spin directions being opposite on the opposing boundaries. In a cylindrical wire, the current-induced surface spins will wind around the wire. When the current direction is reversed, the directions of spin orientation is also reversed.

Gallium manganese arsenide, chemical formula (Ga,Mn)As is a magnetic semiconductor. It is based on the world's second most commonly used semiconductor, gallium arsenide,, and readily compatible with existing semiconductor technologies. Differently from other dilute magnetic semiconductors, such as the majority of those based on II-VI semiconductors, it is not paramagnetic but ferromagnetic, and hence exhibits hysteretic magnetization behavior. This memory effect is of importance for the creation of persistent devices. In (Ga,Mn)As, the manganese atoms provide a magnetic moment, and each also acts as an acceptor, making it a p-type material. The presence of carriers allows the material to be used for spin-polarized currents. In contrast, many other ferromagnetic magnetic semiconductors are strongly insulating and so do not possess free carriers. (Ga,Mn)As is therefore a candidate as a spintronic material.

Inelastic electron tunneling spectroscopy (IETS) is an experimental tool for studying the vibrations of molecular adsorbates on metal oxides. It yields vibrational spectra of the adsorbates with high resolution (< 0.5 meV) and high sensitivity (< 1013 molecules are required to provide a spectrum). An additional advantage is the fact that optically forbidden transitions may be observed as well. Within IETS, an oxide layer with molecules adsorbed on it is put between two metal plates. A bias voltage is applied between the two contacts. An energy diagram of the metal-oxide-metal device under bias is shown in the top figure. The metal contacts are characterized by a constant density of states, filled up to the Fermi energy. The metals are assumed to be equal. The adsorbates are situated on the oxide material. They are represented by a single bridge electronic level, which is the upper dashed line. If the insulator is thin enough, there is a finite probability that the incident electron tunnels through the barrier. Since the energy of the electron is not changed by this process, it is an elastic process. This is shown in the left figure.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Subir Sachdev</span> Indian physicist

Subir Sachdev is Herchel Smith Professor of Physics at Harvard University specializing in condensed matter. He was elected to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in 2014, and received the Lars Onsager Prize from the American Physical Society and the Dirac Medal from the ICTP in 2018. He was a co-editor of the Annual Review of Condensed Matter Physics from 2017–2019.

In condensed matter physics, a quantum spin liquid is a phase of matter that can be formed by interacting quantum spins in certain magnetic materials. Quantum spin liquids (QSL) are generally characterized by their long-range quantum entanglement, fractionalized excitations, and absence of ordinary magnetic order.

Spin engineering describes the control and manipulation of quantum spin systems to develop devices and materials. This includes the use of the spin degrees of freedom as a probe for spin based phenomena. Because of the basic importance of quantum spin for physical and chemical processes, spin engineering is relevant for a wide range of scientific and technological applications. Current examples range from Bose–Einstein condensation to spin-based data storage and reading in state-of-the-art hard disk drives, as well as from powerful analytical tools like nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy and electron paramagnetic resonance spectroscopy to the development of magnetic molecules as qubits and magnetic nanoparticles. In addition, spin engineering exploits the functionality of spin to design materials with novel properties as well as to provide a better understanding and advanced applications of conventional material systems. Many chemical reactions are devised to create bulk materials or single molecules with well defined spin properties, such as a single-molecule magnet. The aim of this article is to provide an outline of fields of research and development where the focus is on the properties and applications of quantum spin.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hughes–Drever experiment</span>

Hughes–Drever experiments are spectroscopic tests of the isotropy of mass and space. Although originally conceived of as a test of Mach's principle, they are now understood to be an important test of Lorentz invariance. As in Michelson–Morley experiments, the existence of a preferred frame of reference or other deviations from Lorentz invariance can be tested, which also affects the validity of the equivalence principle. Thus these experiments concern fundamental aspects of both special and general relativity. Unlike Michelson–Morley type experiments, Hughes–Drever experiments test the isotropy of the interactions of matter itself, that is, of protons, neutrons, and electrons. The accuracy achieved makes this kind of experiment one of the most accurate confirmations of relativity .

In quantum mechanics, orbital magnetization, Morb, refers to the magnetization induced by orbital motion of charged particles, usually electrons in solids. The term "orbital" distinguishes it from the contribution of spin degrees of freedom, Mspin, to the total magnetization. A nonzero orbital magnetization requires broken time-reversal symmetry, which can occur spontaneously in ferromagnetic and ferrimagnetic materials, or can be induced in a non-magnetic material by an applied magnetic field.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Magnetic skyrmion</span> Condensed matter phenomenon; vortex-like magnetic quasiparticle

In physics, magnetic skyrmions are statically stable soliton which have been predicted theoretically and observed experimentally in condensed matter systems. Magnetic skyrmions can be formed in magnetic materials in their 'bulk' such as in manganese monosilicide (MnSi), or in magnetic thin films. They can be achiral, or chiral in nature, and may exist both as dynamic excitations or stable or metastable states. Although the broad lines defining magnetic skyrmions have been established de facto, there exist a variety of interpretations with subtle differences.

Quantum spin tunneling, or quantum tunneling of magnetization, is a physical phenomenon by which the quantum mechanical state that describes the collective magnetization of a nanomagnet is a linear superposition of two states with well defined and opposite magnetization. Classically, the magnetic anisotropy favors neither of the two states with opposite magnetization, so that the system has two equivalent ground states.

In solid-state physics, the kagome metal or kagome magnet is a type of ferromagnetic quantum material. The atomic lattice in a kagome magnet has layered overlapping triangles and large hexagonal voids, akin to the kagome pattern in traditional Japanese basket-weaving. This geometry induces a flat electronic band structure with Dirac crossings, in which the low-energy electron dynamics correlate strongly.

Richard Eric Parry Winpenny FRSC FLSW is a British chemist and a professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Manchester. Winpenny's research is within the fields of inorganic chemistry and magnetochemistry, specifically the areas of single-molecule magnetism, inorganic synthesis, supramolecular chemistry and polymetallic caged complexes.

References

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Further reading