Nano Chemistry & Nano Medicine

Nanomagnetism

Nanomagnetism, the scientific field dedicated to the study of nanoscale magnetic objects, has undergone an explosion of activity over the last few decades, driven by fascinating discoveries such as the interaction of magnetization with spin currents and a wide range of real-world applications. It aims to deal with the magnetic properties of materials that have at least one dimension in the size range from 1 nm to 100 nm. A nanomagnetic material exhibits magnetic behaviors that are distinct from those of the bulk form of the same substance because (i) the material’s dimensions are comparable to the critical lengths of one or more of various physical phenomena, such as the size of the magnetic domains (ii) the translation symmetry is broken, giving rise to specific sites with reduced coordination numbers, broken exchange bonds, and frustration (iii) the material is in close contact with an exterior system such as the substrate or capping layer in the thin film magnets (iv) the spin wave spectrum is changed because the spin wave energy is comparable to the thermal energy. Nanomagnetism includes the study of properties and applications of the magnetism of isolated nanoparticles, nanodots, nanowires, thin films and multilayers, and also macroscopic samples that contain nanoscopic particles.