In magnetic nanoparticles spin glass behavior can be studied through field-cooled magnetization studies. How can this behavior be differentiated from superparamagnetic and spin canting effects in magnetic nanoparticles below Tc or Tn?
Field-cooled (FC) data alone for detecting a spin glass (SG) behavior are not enough because SG is not a thermodynamic (ergodic) state. It is better characterized by an anomalous temperature difference between ZFC and FC regimes (related to some non-ergodicity parameter, an analog of the order parameter in ordered magnetic structures). But most important feature of SG is of course its dynamical response. Unlike any ordered structure, it shows a rather slow (non-exponential) relaxation and pronounced memory (ageing) effects. Tapan is quite right, muSR (plus polarized inelastic neutrons) is the best technique to probe time-dependent response of SG.
Thank you Dr. Tapan and Dr. Sergei for your suggestions. Can we consider SG is a phase transition?. Is there any other complimentary techniques to study SG. My samples are electrodeposited Ag-Ni, Ag-Co alloys.
Observations like- a peak in zero-field-cooled magnetization, high-field irreversibility in M(H) curves, nonexponential relaxation behavior, etc., indicate that a phase resembling a spin glass exists in a frozen nanomagnetic particle system. It is now widely accepted that in a nano-magnetic-particle system there occurs a cooperative freezing of spins at a finite temperature T g as in a normal spin glass. Though in several aspect this ‘‘spin-glass’’-like behavior is similar to that observed in conventional spin glass, but it may be noted that a fine-magnetic- particle system also behaves like a random anisotropy system unlike conventional spin glass. We have used ESR (and/or Mossbauer) And DC magnetization study to investigate these aspects.