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Concept
Ferrimagnetism
Summary
A ferrimagnetic material is a material that has populations of atoms with opposing magnetic moments, as in antiferromagnetism, but these moments are unequal in magnitude so a spontaneous magnetization remains. This can for example occur when the populations consist of different atoms or ions (such as Fe2+ and Fe3+).
Like ferromagnetic substances, ferrimagnetic substances are attracted by magnets and can be magnetized to make permanent magnets. The oldest known magnetic substance, magnetite (Fe3O4), was classified as a ferromagnet before Louis Néel discovered ferrimagnetism in 1948. Since the discovery, numerous uses have been found for ferrimagnetic materials, such as hard drive platters and biomedical applications.
Until the twentieth century, all naturally occurring magnetic substances were called ferromagnets. In 1936, Louis Néel published a paper proposing the existence of a new form of cooperative magnetism he called antiferromagnetism. While working with Mn2Sb, French physicist Charles Guillaud discovered that the current theories on magnetism were not adequate to explain the behavior of the material, and made a model to explain the behavior. In 1948, Néel published a paper about a third type of cooperative magnetism, based on the assumptions in Guillaud's model. He called it ferrimagnetism. In 1970, Néel was awarded for his work in magnetism with the Nobel Prize in Physics.
Ferrimagnetism has the same physical origins as ferromagnetism and antiferromagnetism. In ferrimagnetic materials the magnetization is also caused by a combination of dipole-dipole interactions and exchange interactions resulting from the Pauli exclusion principle. The main difference is that in ferrimagnetic materials there are different types of atoms in the material's unit cell. An example of this can be seen in the figure on the right. Here the atoms with a smaller magnetic moment point in the opposite direction of the larger moments. This arrangement is similar to that present in antiferromagnetic materials, but in ferrimagnetic materials the net moment is nonzero because the opposed moments differ in magnitude.
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In classical electromagnetism, magnetization is the vector field that expresses the density of permanent or induced magnetic dipole moments in a magnetic material. Movement within this field is described by direction and is either Axial or Diametric. The origin of the magnetic moments responsible for magnetization can be either microscopic electric currents resulting from the motion of electrons in atoms, or the spin of the electrons or the nuclei. Net magnetization results from the response of a material to an external magnetic field.
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