Magnetization of densely packed interacting magnetic nanoparticles with cubic and uniaxial anisotropies: A Monte Carlo study

Abstract

The magnetization curves of densely packed single domain magnetic nanoparticles (MNP) are investigated by Monte Carlo simulations in the framework of an effective one spin model. The particles whose size polydispersity is taken into account are arranged in spherical clusters and both dipole dipole interactions (DDI) and magnetic anisotropy energy (MAE) are included in the total energy. Having in mind the special case of spinel ferrites of intrinsic cubic symmetry, combined cubic and uniaxial magnetocrystalline anisotropies are considered with different configurations for the orientations of the cubic and uniaxial axes. It is found that the DDI, together with a marked reduction of the linear susceptibility are responsible for a damping of the peculiarities due to the MAE cubic component on the magnetization. As an application, we show that the simulated magnetization curves compare well to experimental results for $\gamma$--Fe$_2$O$_3$ MNP for small to moderate values of the field.