Magnetic and structural properties of nanocrystalline PrCo$_3$

TL;DR

This study investigates the structure and magnetic properties of nanocrystalline PrCo3 produced by high energy milling, including effects of annealing, magnetic measurements, and micromagnetic simulations to understand nanoscale influences.

Contribution

It provides new insights into the magnetic behavior of nanocrystalline PrCo3 and models the nanoscale structure's impact on magnetization using micromagnetic simulations.

Findings

Curie temperature of 349 K

High coercive fields at low temperature

Micromagnetic model agrees with experimental data

Abstract

The structure and magnetic properties of nanocrystalline PrCo$_3$ obtained from high energy milling technique are investigated by X-ray diffraction, Curie temperature determination and magnetic properties measurements are reported. The as-milled samples have been annealed in a temperature range of 1023 K to 1273 K for 30 mn to optimize the extrinsic properties. The Curie temperature is 349\,K and coercive fields of 55\,kOe at 10\,K and 12\,kOe at 293\,K are obtained on the samples annealed at 1023\,K. A simulation of the magnetic properties in the framework of micromagnetism has been performed in order to investigate the influence of the nanoscale structure. A composite model with hard crystallites embedded in an amorphous matrix, corresponding to the as-milled material, leads to satisfying agreement with the experimental magnetization curve. [ K. Younsi, V. Russier and L. Bessais, J. Appl. Phys. {\bf 107}, 083916 (2010)]. The microscopic scale will also be considered from DFT based calculations of the electronic structure of $R$Co$_x$ compounds, where $R$ = (Y, Pr) and $x$ = 2,3 and 5.