SPring-8, the large synchrotron radiation facility

Date & Time: 14:00-15:00, March 20, 2006

Speaker: Dr. Carlo Carbone
Affiliation: Istituto di Struttura della Materia, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche

Abstract
　　The fabrication of functional magnetic nanoscale structures, made of a few atoms per magnetic unit, as well as the manipulation of their magnetic properties, represents today a critical and challenging task. Recent developments in synchrotron radiation methods are opening new perspectives for exploring magnetism in nanostructures down to the single atom limit. Advanced synchrotron radiation techniques provide high sensitivity to the study of very diluted magnetic nanosystems, unveiling thus novel properties hardly accessible by other experimental techniques. X-ray circular magnetic dichroism, in particular, has been successfully used to track the evolution of the magnetic properties from single adatoms to finite-sized particles, constructed atom-by-atom in a controlled fashion. It will be shown here how relevant magnetic properties can be tailored by varying size, shape, and chemical composition of the individual particles, as well as how the interactions with the supporting substrate define the magnetic behaviour of nanostructured networks. Giant magnetic anisotropy are observed for single adatoms, and scale with the orbital magnetic moment and atomic coordination in larger clusters and wires, while unusual oscillations of the easy axis of magnetization and magnetic anisotropy.