Temperature and magnetic field-assisted switching of magnetization and observation of exchange bias in YbCrO3 nanocrystals.

Abstract

In this paper, we demonstrate an interesting feature in YbCrO3 (YCO) nanocrystals, in which the material shows temperature and external magnetic field-assisted switching (a complete sign reversal) of zero field cooled magnetization (MZFC) and observation of exchange bias (EB) as a result of competing spin interaction at low temperature. This feature can be applied in nonvolatile memories, where, simply by changing the magnitude of the Hext and T, the polarity of the magnetization can be switched between negative and positive. We also observed negative magnetization in YCO. Our results showed that, below its Nèel temperature (TN ≈ 119 K), the MZFC crosses over to negative sign for H < 1000 Oe. At 60 K, YCO showed a significant negative MZFC ≈ -0.05 emu/g (at 100 Oe) due to the competing effects of Yb(3+), Cr(3+) spins, thermal activation energy, and Hext. At further lower temperatures, the MZFC showed a crossover to positive values, and the crossover temperature showed the dependence on Hext (∼19 K for 100 Oe curve). The YCO also showed Hext and T-dependent HEB, which changed its sign with T. The observed T-dependent sign reversal in the EB was closely associated with the sign reversal of MZFC. The symmetric shift in field-cooled isothermal hysteresis curves confirmed that the observed EB was not due to the unsaturated minor loop. The training cycle further confirmed that the HEB value decreased to ∼2% of the initial value of observed EB, which was very small compared to the observed HEB in YCO, which indicated stable spin configuration at the locally formed ferromagnetic/antiferromagnetic interface.