Evidence for suppression of collective magnetism in Fe-Ag granular multilayers

TL;DR

This study investigates how the collective magnetic behavior of Fe nanoparticles in Fe-Ag multilayers is suppressed due to dipolar interactions, with the suppression influenced by the Ag layer thickness and the formation of pinholes.

Contribution

It provides new insights into how Ag layer thickness and pinhole formation affect magnetic interactions and collective behavior in Fe-Ag multilayers.

Findings

Interaction increases with Ag thickness due to pinholes at small thicknesses.

At larger Ag thicknesses, the system exhibits a superspin-glass state.

Suppression of collective magnetism occurs when particle anisotropy exceeds a threshold.

Abstract

Evidence for the suppression of collective magnetic behavior of dipolarly interacting Fe nanoparticles is found in Fe-Ag granular multilayers. Interaction of Fe particles located in neighboring Fe layers is studied as a function of the nominal thickness of the Ag layer in between only two Fe layers. The surprisingly increasing interaction with increasing Ag-layer thickness, verified by memory-effect measurements, is explained by the formation of pinholes in the Ag layer at small Ag thicknesses, allowing direct ferromagnetic coupling between Fe particles in neighboring Fe layers which may hinder the frustration of superspins favored by dipolar interactions. At larger Ag thicknesses, the Ag layer is continuous without pinholes and frustration leads to the appearance of the superspin-glass state. The effect of increasing interactions correlates well with the growing deviation at low temperatures of the measured field-cooled (FC) magnetization from the interaction-free FC curve calculated by a model based on the relaxation of two-level systems. Similar phenomenon is reported in a recently published paper (S\'anchez et al., Small 2022, 18, 2106762) where a dense nanoparticle system is studied. The collective magnetic behavior of the particles due to dipolar interactions is suppressed when the anisotropy energy of the individual particles exceeds a certain threshold.