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Field Dependence of Blocking Temperature in Magnetite Nanoparticles

Spherical magnetite nanoparticles having average particle size <d> = 5 nm have been synthesized by coprecipitation of Fe(II) and Fe(III) salts in KOH with Polyvinylalcohol (PVA). The resulting dry powder displayed superparamgnetic (SPM) behaviour at room temperature, with a transition to a blocked state at TB ~ 45 K for applied field Happ = 500 Oe. The effect of dipolar interactions was investigated by measuring the dependence of TB on the applied field Hap and driven ac field in susceptibility data. A thermally activated model has been used to fit the dynamic data to obtain the single-particle energy barriers Ea = KeffV, allowing us to estimate the contributions of dipolar interactions to the single-particle effective magnetic anisotropy Keff. We have measured the dependence of TB with Hap in order to draw the transition contours of a H-T diagram. Two different regimes are found for the (TB-T0) ~Hλ dependence at low and high fields, that can be understood within a pure SPM relaxation-time (Néel-Brown) landscape. The TB(H) data shows a crossover from λ = 2/3 to λ ~2 for applied magnetic fields of \approx 550 Oe.