Room temperature soft ferromagnetism in the nanocrystalline form of YCo2 - a well-known bulk Pauli paramagnet

Abstract

The Laves phase compound, YCo2, is a well-known exchange-enahnced Pauli paramagnet. We report here that, in the nanocrystalline form, this compound interestingly is an itinerant ferromagnet at room temperature with a low coercive-field. The magnitude of the saturation moment (about 1 Bohr-magneton per formula unit) is large enough to infer that the ferromagnetism is not a surface phenomenon in these nanocrystallites. Since these ferromagnetic nanocrystallines are easy to synthesize with a stable form in air, one can explore applications, particularly where hysteresis is a disadvantage.

References in corpus (2)

• Ferromagnetism as a universal feature of nanoparticles of the otherwise nonmagnetic oxides
• Room-temperature ferromagnetism in nanoparticles of superconducting materials

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Normal and inverse magnetocaloric effects in structurally disordered Laves phase Y${}_{1-x}$Gd${}_x$Co${}_2$ (0 $\le$ x $\le$ 1) compounds
• Induced magnetic ordering in alloyed compounds based on Pauli paramagnet YCo${}_2$
• Influence of structural disorder on magnetic properties and electronic structure of YCo${}_2$
• Magnetism of fine particles of Kondo lattices, obtained by high-energy ball-milling
• Magnetic behavior of nanocrystalline ErCo2
• Spin injection dependent metamagnetic transition