Disentangling the core/shell nanoparticle magnetization and unraveling the pinning processes at the interface

Core/shell magnetic nanoparticle systems (NPs) exhibiting different magnetic orders and the structural mismatch between core and shell will be studied by employing half-polarized small-angle neutron scattering (SANSPOL). The main objective is to unravel the nature of the core/shell interface and magnetic morphology of these complex systems through analysis of the pure nuclear scattering and nuclear magnetic interference term, respectively, and to investigate in detail the magnetic response of these systems with complex architecture for different structural mismatch and different magnetic order between phases. The results of our approach will ultimately uncover the entanglement between the macroscopic response (exchange-bias) and the core/shell structure (magnetic order and structural mismatch). Revealing the correlation of the magnetic order and structure with the exchange-bias coupling is highly important for explaining relaxation effects, technologically relevant for, e.g., magnetic hyperthermia and the magnetic microstructure.