Exchange through nonmagnetic insulating matrix

Authors

Ralph Skomski, University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow
Arti Kashyap, University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow
Y. Quiang, University of Nebraska - Lincoln
David J. Sellmyer, University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow

Document Type

Article

Date of this Version

5-15-2003

Comments

Published by American Institute of Physics. J. Applied Physics 93, 6477-6479 (2003). ©2003 American Institute of Physics. Permission to use. http://jap.aip.org/jap/.

Abstract

Exchange interactions between hard-magnetic particles in a nonmagnetic matrix are investigated by model calculations. A Landau–Ginzburg approach is developed to describe the net exchange interactions between spheres of arbitrary diameters. Introducing cylindrical coordinates and integrating over the surfaces of the adjacent spheres yields an exchange coupling which decreases with a decay length depending on interatomic exchange, intra-atomic exchange, and temperature. Typically, the decay length does not exceed a few interatomic distances. The decay is exponential but also contains a prefactor depending on the surface curvature of the grains. It increases with decreasing curvature, but this dependence is only a small correction to the leading exponential term.