Memory, Aging and Spin Glass Nature: A Study of NiO Nanoparticles

Abstract

We report studies on magnetization dynamics in NiO nanoparticles of average size 5 nm. Temperature and time dependence of dc magnetization, wait time dependence of magnetic relaxation (aging) and memory phenomena in the dc magnetization are studied with various temperature and field protocols. We observe that the system shows memory and aging in field cooled and zero field cooled magnetization measurements. These experiments show that the magnetic behavior of NiO nanoparticles is similar to spin glasses. We argue that the spin glass behavior originates from the freezing of spins at the surface of the individual particles.