Grain-boundary micromagnetism

Authors

• Ralph Skomski, University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow
• H. Zeng, University of Nebraska - Lincoln
• David J. Sellmyer, University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow

Document Type

Article

Date of this Version

July 2001

Comments

Published by IEEE; IEEE Trans. IEEE Trans-Mag. 37, 2549 (2001). ©2001 IEEE. Permission to use. http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/

Abstract

Continuum and layer-resolved calculations are used to investigate the spin structure in the vicinity of grain boundaries. Reduced exchange in the grain-boundary region gives rise to a quasidiscontinuity of the magnetization and yields a perturbation which decays exponentially inside the grains. An effective intergranular exchange is obtained as a micromagnetically well-defined function of the grain-boundary exchange, and it is discussed how grain boundaries affect the hysteresis loops of nanostructures.