General Regularities and Differences in the Behavior of the Dynamic Magnetization Switching of Ferrimagnetic (CoFe2O4) and Antiferromagnetic (NiO) Nanoparticles

In antiferromagnetic (AFM) nanoparticles, an additional ferromagnetic phase forms and leads to the appearance in AFM nanoparticles of a noncompensated magnetic moment and the magnetic properties typical of common FM nanoparticles. In this work, to reveal the regularities and differences of the dynamic magnetization switching in FM and AFM nanoparticles, the typical representatives of such materials are studied: CoFe2O4 and NiO nanoparticles with average sizes 6 and 8 nm, respectively. The high fields of the irreversible behavior of the magnetizations of these samples determine the necessity of using strong pulsed fields (amplitude to 130 kOe) to eliminate the effect of the partial hysteresis loop when studying the dynamic magnetic hysteresis. For both types of the samples, coercive force HC at the dynamic magnetization switching is markedly higher than HC at quasi-static conditions. HC increases as the pulse duration τP decreases and the maximum applied field H0 increases. The dependence of HC on field variation rate dH/dt = H0/2τP is a unambiguous function for CoFe2O4 nanoparticles, and it is precisely such a behavior is expected from a system of single-domain FM nanoparticles. At the same time, for AFM NiO nanoparticles, the coercive force is no longer an unambiguous function of dH/dt, and the value of applied field H0 influences more substantially. Such a difference in the behaviors of FM and AFM nanoparticles is caused by the interaction of the FM subsystem and the AFM “core” inside AFM nanoparticles. This circumstance should be taken into account when developing the theory of dynamic hysteresis of the AFM nanoparticles and also to take into account their practical application.