Angular dependence of the magnetic properties of cylindrical diameter modulated

Ni80Fe20 nanowires
F. Tejo, N. Vidal-Silva, A. P. Espejo, and J. Escrig
Citation: Journal of Applied Physics 115, 17D136 (2014); doi: 10.1063/1.4865777
View online: http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4865777
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JOURNAL OF APPLIED PHYSICS 115, 17D136 (2014)

Angular dependence of the magnetic properties of cylindrical diameter

modulated Ni80Fe20 nanowires
F. Tejo,1 N. Vidal-Silva,1 A. P. Espejo,1 and J. Escrig1,2,a)
1

Departamento de Fsica, Universidad de Santiago de Chile (USACH), Av. Ecuador 3493, Santiago, Chile
Center for the Development of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (CEDENNA), Av. Ecuador 3493, Santiago,
Chile
2

(Presented 5 November 2013; received 19 September 2013; accepted 12 November 2013; published
online 18 February 2014)
We have investigated numerically the angular dependence of the coercivity and remanence of
cylindrical diameter modulated Ni80Fe20 nanowires. We observed that the system always starts
reversing its magnetization through the thickest segment by means of a quite complex reversal
process, considering the propagation of two vortex domain walls. Furthermore, we observed a
transition from vortex domain walls to coherent-mode rotation for the thinnest segment as a
function of the angle in which the external magnetic field is applied. In addition, we obtained a
non-monotonic behavior for the coercivity and saturation field as a function of the angle at which
the external magnetic field is applied. Finally, diameter modulation is an attractive way to handle
over the motion of magnetic domain walls, a phenomenon proposed as a future data storage
C 2014 AIP Publishing LLC. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4865777]
platform. V

Introducing changes in diameter in a controlled manner

into nanowires or nanotubes should give rise to novel physical properties as well as novel possibilities to fine-tune
them.1,2 Besides, diameter modulations should provide a
handle over the motion of magnetic domain walls, allowing
for the implementation of a novel data storage platform, that
is, more robust and less energy-intensive than current hard
disk drives.3 To date, there are only a few reports on magnetic nanoparticles with modulated diameters,410 and they
concluded that their magnetic properties strongly depend on
the presence of diameter modulations. However, there are
still open questions about the mechanisms responsible for
the magnetization reversal of cylindrical diameter modulated
nanowires.
Coercivity is one of the most important properties of
magnetic materials for many present and future applications
of permanent magnets/magnetic materials, magnetic recording, and spin electronics, and therefore, the understanding of
magnetization reversal mechanisms is a permanent challenge
for researchers involved in studying the properties of these
materials. Recently, Salem et al.8 found that when a magnetic field is applied parallel to the axis of a cylindrical diameter modulated Ni80Fe20 nanowire, it reverses its
magnetization via the nucleation and propagation of a vortex
domain wall. The system begins generating vortex domains
in the nanowire ends and in the transition region between the
two segments to minimize magnetostatic energy generated
by surfaces perpendicular to the initial magnetization of the
sample.
On the other hand, as different magnetization reversal
mechanisms would give a different angular dependence of
the coercivity, the measurements of Hc(h) would provide
a)

Author to whom correspondence should be addressed. Electronic mail:

juan.escrig@usach.cl.

0021-8979/2014/115(17)/17D136/3/$30.00

helpful information about the rotation mechanisms. However,

there is no report that investigates the angular dependence of
the magnetic properties of cylindrical diameter modulated
nanowires, in spite of many works on this topic comprising
simple magnetic nanowires1113 and nanotubes.1416
Following these ideas, in this work, we have performed
micromagnetic simulations to investigate the angular dependence of the magnetic properties of cylindrical diameter
modulated Ni80Fe20 nanowires. We focus on the behavior of
the coercivity Hc, remanence Mr, and saturation field Hs,
concluding that changing the angle h at which the external
magnetic field is applied enables us to control the magnetic
properties of cylindrical diameter modulated nanowires.
We investigate the hysteresis loops for cylindrical diameter modulated Ni80Fe20 nanowires using a micromagnetic
simulator.17 Our starting point is a cylindrical diameter
modulated Ni80Fe20 nanowire with a length L 1400 nm as
illustrated in Fig. 1. The wire is formed by three sections:
the thinner section has a diameter d1 70 nm and a length
L1 900 nm, the thicker section has a diameter d2 140 nm
and a length L2 400 nm, and the interface between both sections has a length Lt 100 nm and a variable diameter d,
which we model as dz 70=100z  560. This expression
is valid only at the interface.
We have used for the cylindrical diameter modulated
Ni80Fe20 nanowires a saturation magnetization of
Ms 860  103 A/m and a stiffness constant A 13  1012
J/m. Since the wires are polycrystalline, we neglected the
crystalline anisotropies. For our simulations, we consider
cell sizes of 2  2  10 nm3. Effects of discretization are inherent in the methodology used here. As we are simulating
very long nanoparticles (1400 nm), we chose a cell size sufficiently large along the axis of the nanoparticle to finalize
simulations in a reasonable time (it is important to note that
the transition zone causes the simulation to take much longer

115, 17D136-1

C 2014 AIP Publishing LLC

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Tejo et al.

FIG. 1. Geometrical characterization of a cylindrical diameter modulated

Ni80Fe20 nanowire.

time than it would take for a single cylinder), yet small

enough in the xy plane to reproduce the cylindrical geometry
of our nanostructures (the idea is to reduce the edge roughness caused for simulating a cylinder with cubic cells). A
similar discretization was used previously.18 In all the simulations, damping constant of 0.5 is considered.
As mentioned in the introduction, an interesting aspect
to be explored is the angular dependence of the magnetization. Hysteresis loops for four different h values are depicted
in Fig. 2. It is clearly seen that for h 60 the system has the
highest coercivity (see also Fig. 4). It is further noted that the
remanence decreases as the angle h increases, due to the
shape anisotropy of the nanowire. Furthermore, the inset of
Fig. 2 shows the saturation field Hs as a function of the angle
h. From this figure we observe a non-monotonic behavior of
the saturation field presenting a maximum for an angle
h 60 . This behavior can be understood as an indication
that the system studied is composed of two segments of different diameters.

FIG. 2. Hysteresis loops for a cylindrical diameter modulated Ni80Fe20

nanowire as a function of h. Inset shows the saturation field Hs as a function
of h.

J. Appl. Phys. 115, 17D136 (2014)

To clarify the origin of this behavior, we show in Fig. 3

snapshots of the magnetization reversal for h 0 and
h 90 . The nucleation and propagation of a domain wall (if
 i z=Ms , the av i z M
any) is monitored by the value of m
erage value of the component of the magnetic moment at the
position z relative to the saturation value. Thus, the position
 z j. The
of the wall is determined by the maximum of 1  jm
solid line represents the average axial component of the mag z , while the other two (in-plane) components
netization m
 x lines.
 y and dotted m
are given by the dashed m
From the left panels in Fig. 3 we can conclude that for
h 0 the nanowire reverses its magnetization by the following sequence: first, domain walls nucleate at the ends of the
wire and in the transition zone. Second, the domain walls of
the transition zone and the thickest segment begin to propagate through the thickest segment, considering the propagation of two vortex domain walls. Because this segment is
very short, the reversal process is quite complex. Once the
thickest segment completely reversed its magnetization, then
the vortex domain walls start to propagate through the thinnest segment. On the other hand, from the right panels we
can conclude that for h 90 , the nanowire reverses its magnetization through a pseudo-coherent rotation. In particular,
the thinnest segment reverses its magnetization by coherent
rotation, but not the thickest segment. In fact, the process of
reversal is more like the propagation of vortex domain walls.
In Fig. 4, we summarize the coercivity Hc and remanence Mr obtained from our calculations for different h values. We observe a significant dependence of the magnetic
properties on h. In particular, the coercive field can be tuned
between 0 and 700 Oe approximately by properly adjusting
h. Besides, the dependence of the coercivity on h is not

FIG. 3. Average value of the component of the magnetic moment at the

position z relative to the saturation value for h 0 (left) and h 90 (right).
The abscissa represents the axial coordinate, z, along the diameter modulated nanowire and the ordinates give the average components of the mag y : dashed line (green); m
 z : solid line
 x : dotted line (blue); m
netization. m
(red).

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Tejo et al.

FIG. 4. Coercivity (black squares) and relative remanence (red circles) for
cylindrical diameter modulated Ni80Fe20 nanowires as a function of h.

monotonic (the coercivity reaches its maximum at h 60

and then decreases for further increases in the angle). This
behavior has been observed previously for nanowires13,19
and nanotubes,20,21 and it has been interpreted as arising due
to the transition between two different magnetization reversal modes, according to what we have observed and concluded in the previous figure.
Moreover, when the applied field is reduced to zero, at
remanence, the magnetization is measured at the h angle
with respect to the easy axis. Thus, we can observe that the
remanence follows13 the function Mr h Mr cos2 h, with
Mr Mr h 0 the remanence measured at h 0 . Finally,
we observe an unhysteretic behavior for h 90 . This behavior allows us to conclude that shape anisotropy of nanowires
may induce a hard axis of magnetization when h 90 .
It is important to note that the magnetic properties (coercivity and remanence) of diameter modulated nanowires differ
from those measures to conventional cylindrical nanowires. In
particular for h 0 , Allende et al.4 have obtained that the
coercivity for a diameter modulated nanowire is lower than
the coercivity measured for a conventional thin nanowire, and
higher than that measured for a conventional thick nanowire.
On the other hand, the remanence obtained for an cylindrical
diameter modulated nanowire is always smaller than the remanence obtained for single diameter nanowires. Further, they
also showed that the magnetic properties of the diameter
modulated nanowires do not vary much by changing the ratio
between the modulated wire diameters.
Regarding the effect of magnetostatic interactions, it is
important to note that the stray field of a simple wire is most
intense at its extremities, therefore in a modulated wire, the
presence of additional non-vertical surfaces strongly reinforces the stray field at the modulations.10 Finally, if one considers an ordered array of nanowires, magnetostatic
interactions are responsible for an additional antiferromagnetic or ferromagnetic contribution to the field for h 0 and
h 90 , respectively.
In conclusion, by means of micromagnetic simulations
we have investigated the angular dependence of the magnetic

J. Appl. Phys. 115, 17D136 (2014)

properties of cylindrical diameter modulated Ni80Fe20 nanowires. We have observed a significant dependence of the
magnetic properties on h. Besides, we obtained a
non-monotonic behavior for the coercivity and saturation
field as a function of the angle at which the external magnetic field is applied. The behavior of the coercivity can be
interpreted as arising due to the transition between two different magnetization reversal modes, while the behavior of
the saturation field can be understood as an indication that
the system studied is composed of two segments of different
diameters. Besides, we observed an unhysteretic behavior
for h 90 . Thus, varying the direction of the applied external field can be used to control the magnetic properties of a
cylindrical diameter modulated nanowire for specific
applications.
The authors acknowledge financial support from the
Fondecyt Grant 1110784, Grant ICM P10-061-F by Fondo de
Innovacion para la Competitividad-Minecon and the
Financiamiento Basal para Centros Cientficos y Tecnologicos
de Excelencia, under Project FB0807. CONICYT Ph.D.
Program Fellowships are also acknowledged.
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