Structural and magnetic properties of amorphous iron oxide

Abstract

The structural and magnetic properties of amorphous Fe₂O₃ have been studied by polarized neutron small angle scattering, transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and dc magnetization techniques. The small angle neutron scattering (SANS) study shows two different lognormal distributions of particle sizes with mean diameters of ∼4.14 and 1.21 nm with standard deviations 0.33 and 0.40, respectively, and the structure factor corresponds to a mass fractal with a fractal dimension of 2.42. A short-range crystalline nature for these nanoparticles has been confirmed from the high resolution TEM study. The magnetic field and temperature dependent magnetization has been found to scale very well with the SANS signal. It is evident from the field dependent polarized SANS study that the spin clusters do not grow in size under applied field; rather a larger spin alignment occurs under field.