Tailor-made modern high-quality magnets and high-density recording systems

Magnetic high-quality materials with specific material parameters and microstructures guarantee optimum magnetic properties. This correlation especially becomes obvious for nanocrystalline and nanostructured supermagnets (intermetallic 3d-4f compounds). The detailed analysis of high-sensitive magnetization measurements and high-resolution electron microscopy techniques in combination with the theory of micromagnetism allowed a quantitative interpretation of the occurring magnetization processes. This enables now a quite specific tailoring of optimized magnetic properties.

Also in the modern information and sensor technology single-domain nanoparticles and thin films are of steadily growing interest for realizing high recording densities (up to Terabit/inch2), ultrashort switching times (sub-nanosec) and long-time stability against thermal fluctuations. These characteristics sensitively depend on the magnetic material parameters, the particle's shape and dimension and on the applied magnetic field. This correlation is for the first time systematically analyzed for hard and soft magnetic particles and thin films using micromagnetic computational techniques based on the finite element method. The results give a fundamental insight into the complex correlations between the basic properties required for high-density magnetic recording.