S.J. Blundell

Organic and molecular magnets

Historically most materials in magnetic applications are based on inorganic materials. Recently, however, organic and molecular materials have begun to show increasing promise. Purely organic ferromagnets, based upon nitronyl nitroxide radicals, show long range magnetic order at very low temperatures in the region of 1 K, while sulfur based radicals show weak ferromagnetism at temperatures up to 36 K. It is also possible to prepare molecule based magnets in which transition metal ions are used to provide the magnetic moment, but organic groups mediate the interactions. This strategy has produced magnetic materials with a large variety of structures, including chains, layered systems and three-dimensional networks, some of which show ordering at room temperature and some of which have very high coercivity. Even if long range magnetic order is not achieved, the spin crossover effect may be observed, which has important applications. Further magnetic materials may be obtained by constructing charge transfer salts, which can produce metallic molecular magnets. Another development is single-molecule magnets, formed by preparing small magnetic clusters. These materials can show macroscopic quantum tunnelling of the magnetization and may have uses as memory devices or in quantum computation applications.

Spin-polarized muons in condensed matter physics

A positive muon is a spin-1/2 particle. Beams of muons with all their spins polarized can be prepared and subsequently implanted in various types of condensed matter. The subsequent precession and relaxation of their spins can then be used to investigate a variety of static and dynamic effects in a sample and hence to deduce properties concerning magnetism, superconductivity and molecular dynamics. Though strictly a lepton, and behaving essentially like a heavy electron, it is convenient to think of a muon as a light proton, and it is often found with a captured electron in a hydrogen-like atom known as muonium. This article outlines the principles of various experimental techniques which involve implanted muons and describes some recent applications. The use of muons in condensed matter physics has shed new light on subjects as diverse as passivation in semiconductors, frustrated spin systems, vortex lattice melting, and quantum diffusion of light particles.

Magnetoresistance and magnetization in submicron ferromagnetic gratings

A technique for engineering micron and submicron scale structures from magnetic films of transition metals has been developed using a combination of electron‐ and ion‐beam lithography enabling high‐quality arrays of submicron magnetic Fe wires to be fabricated. This process can be used to fabricate novel devices from a variety of metal combinations which would not be possible by the usual liftoff metallization method. The structure and magnetic properties are reported of an epitaxial 25 nm Fe(001)/GaAs(001) film and the wire gratings which are fabricated from it. The width of the wires in the grating is 0.5 μm for all structures studied, but the separation of each wire is varied in the range 0.5 to 16 μm. An artificially induced shape anisotropy field of around 1 kG, consistent with a magnetostatic calculation, was observed for all separations studied. The field dependence of the magneto‐optic Kerr effect and magnetoresistance (MR) data is consistent with a twisted magnetization configuration across the w...

Structure induced magnetic anisotropy behavior in Co/GaAs(001) films

Epitaxial Co has been grown on GaAs(001) and studied by both low‐energy electron diffraction (LEED) and reflection high‐energy electron diffraction (RHEED), and by the magneto‐optic Kerr effect (MOKE) and polarized neutron reflection (PNR). Three samples were fabricated using different growth procedures: (1) ‘‘interrupted’’ growth (including an anneal); (2) and (3) continuous growth of similar thicknesses. For sample 1, RHEED patterns indicate an initial growth in the bcc phase followed by a relaxation into a distorted single phase at completion of growth, whereas samples 2 and 3 showed a multicrystalline structure after growth. LEED patterns were used to check the existence of the 2×4 reconstruction patterns before growth, but no LEED patterns could be obtained after more than 2 A Co was deposited, in contrast to the RHEED patterns which remained visible throughout the growth. Structural analysis of the completed films indicates the formation of a ∼10 A CoO layer on the Co/air interface, and gives thickn...

Test for interlayer coherence in a quasi-two-dimensional superconductor.

Peaks in the magnetoresistivity of the layered superconductor kappa - (BEDT-TTF)2Cu(NCS)(2), measured in fields < or =45 T applied within the layers, show that the Fermi surface is extended in the interlayer direction and enable the interlayer transfer integral (t( perpendicular) approximately 0.04 meV) to be deduced. However, the quasiparticle scattering rate tau(-1) is such that Plancks over 2pi/tau approximately 6t( perpendicular), implying that kappa - (BEDT-TTF)2Cu(NCS)(2) meets the criterion used to identify interlayer incoherence. The applicability of this criterion to anisotropic materials is thus shown to be questionable.

Spin-polarised neutron reflection studies of epitaxial films

Abstract The application of polarised neutron reflection (PNR) to investigations of the static magnetic properties of ultrathin epitaxial films is discussed. PNR yields the absolute value of the magnetic moment per atom of sandwiched monolayer thickness films with high accuracy, while in contrast with SQUID magnetometry for example, no magnetic signal requiring correction arises due to the substrate. PNR also provides valuable information relating to the interface quality. The roughness amplitude and correlation length can be estimated from the specular reflectivity and the angular width of the diffusely reflected beam respectively. We discusse the observed dependence of the magnetisation upon the transition metal layer thickness in the 1–10 ML range for Ag/Fe/Ag(001), Ag/Co/Ag(001), Cu/Co/Cu(001) and Ag/Cr/Ag(001) sandwich structures as an illustration of PNR as a magnetometric technique. The sensitivity of the wavevector-dependent reflectivity to the layer dependent magnetisation is illustrated by our recent investigations of sputtered Fe/Cr/Fe layers in the antiparallel coupling regime and of a ‘thick’ bcc Co/GaAs(001) film.

Phase boundary in the dimensionality of angle-dependent magnetoresistance oscillations in the charge-transfer salt ?

Angle-dependent magnetoresistance oscillations (AMROs) have been studied in the isostructural charge-transfer salts and (where BEDT-TTF is bis(ethylenedithio)tetrathiafulvalene) in steady fields of up to 30 T. The shapes of the approximately elliptical quasi-two-dimensional (Q2D) Fermi surfaces that these organic metals possess have been determined at 30 T and are found to be in broad agreement with recent band-structure calculations. The Fermi surface of the salt undergoes a reconstruction at low fields and temperatures, resulting in a change in the dimensionality of the AMROs from Q2D character to quasi-one-dimensional character. This change is associated with the kink transition that is observed in magnetic field sweeps and is attributed to the formation of a spin-density wave ground state. The phase boundary of the change in the AMRO dimensionality has been followed to both the low-temperature high-field (about 23 T) and low-field high-temperature (about 8 K) extremes. The data are compared with recently proposed models of the AMROs and Fermi surfaces for these materials.

Observation of a magnetic transition in para-pyridyl nitronyl nitroxide using zero-field μSR

We report the observation of a magnetic transition at around 90 mK in the nitronyl nitroxide radical system para-pyridyl nitronyl nitroxide (p-PYNN) in zero applied field using the muon-spin rotation (μSR) technique.

The magnetoresistance of sub-micron Fe wires

Abstract A novel combination of electron- and ion-beam lithography has been used to prepare Fe gratings with wire widths of 0.5 μm and wire separations in the range 0.5–4 μm from an Fe/GaAs (001) film of thickness 25 nm. With an in-plane magnetic field applied perpendicular to the length of the wires, a harder magnetisation loop is observed using the magneto-optic Kerr effect (MOKE), compared with that observed in the unprocessed film. We observe a strong effect in the magnetoresistance (MR) when the magnetic field is applied transverse to the wires. It is believed that this effect originates from the highly non-uniform demagnetising field in each wire of the grating. These results demonstrate that the combination of MOKE and MR measurements can provide important information about the magnetisation reversal processes in magnetic gratings and can be used to understand the effect of shape anisotropy on magnetic properties.

Fermi surface shape and angle-dependent magnetoresistance oscillations

The shape of the Fermi surface of organic metals can be measured by recording angle-dependent magnetoresistance oscillations. We review this technique and develop a model for parametrizing the shape of the quasi-two-dimensional Fermi surface sections which often appear in organic metals. Using this model, we show that it is possible to extract more detail about the quasi-two-dimensional pocket shape from angle-dependent magnetoresistance oscillations than in the traditional approximation which assumes an elliptical Fermi surface shape. We also consider the implications for cyclotron resonance experiments.