Low Temperature Spin-Glass-Like Phases in Magnetic Nano-Granular Composites

It is a common understanding that the dipole–dipole interaction among the magnetic nanoparticles may result in a low-temperature spin-glass phase, which has been evidenced by observation of aging effect and memory effect. However, several studies on the nano-particles systems showed that some of the observed spin-glass-like phenomena could be due to the existence of spin-glass-like shells surrounding the ferrimagnetic cores. Therefore, it is very important to understand that how the dipole–dipole interaction induce the spin-glass phase. In order to address this issue, we have fabricated Co–SiO₂ and Fe–SiO₂ nano-granular thin films and measured the memory effect for them. Spin-glass-like phase has been observed at low temperatures. We found that, after annealing, the size of the clusters increased significantly. Based on a simple model, the dipole–dipole interaction between the clusters must be increased accordingly for the annealed samples. Interestingly, the memory effect is greatly weakened in the annealed films, which strongly suggested that the dipole–dipole interaction may not be the major factor for the formation of the low-temperature spin-glass-like phase.