Induced ferro-ferromagnetic exchange bias in nanocrystalline systems

An unusual magnetic hysteresis consisting of horizontally shifted and distorted loops appears in some Co-based nanocrystalline systems in which soft and hard ferromagnetic phases coexist. The bias field can be tuned at room temperature by premagnetising treatments. Several works attributed the origin of this effect to the dipolar interaction, while little attention has been paid to the exchange interaction contribution due to its short-range nature. In this paper the relative importance of the dipolar and exchange interactions is investigated by means of micromagnetic simulations. It is demonstrated that the exchange coupling, though a nearest-neighbour interaction, has far-reaching repercussions in the magnetic configuration, and substantially prevails over the magnetostatic interaction as the cause of the asymmetrical magnetisation reversal. The straightforward conclusion is that we are dealing with a ferro-ferromagnetic exchange bias effect.