We investigated a polycrystalline sample of the ferrimagnetic compound Tb0.15Co0.85 by magnetometry and small-angle neutron scattering (SANS). The magnetization curve at 300 K is characteristic for soft ferrimagnets but at 5 K the hysteresis indicates the existence of magnetic domains. The magnetic SANS signal suggests that at 300 K the Tb and Co moments are correlated over large volumes within the micrometer-sized grains with correlation lengths > 100 nm. At 5 K, however, the magnetic SANS analysis reveals a reduced correlation length of around 4.5 nm, which indicates the formation of narrow magnetic domains within the ferrimagnet with one dimension being in the nm range. We attribute the observed changes of the domain structure to the temperature-dependence of the magnetic properties of the Tb sublattice.
@article{arxiv.2004.10475,
title = {Magnetic correlations in polycrystalline $\mathrm{Tb_{0.15}Co_{0.85}}$},
author = {Mathias Bersweiler and Philipp Bender and Inma Peral and Lucas Eichenberger and Michel Hehn and Vincent Polewczyk and Sebastian Mühlbauer and Andreas Michels},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2004.10475},
year = {2020}
}
Comments
This is the version of the article accepted for publication including all changes made as a result of the peer review process, as submitted to Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics. IOP Publishing Ltd is not responsible for any errors or omissions in this version of the manuscript or any version derived from it. The Version of Record is available online at doi.org/10.1088/1361-6463/ab8b95