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Is gadolinium really ferromagnetic?

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Rare-earth metals

Nature volume 401, pages 35–36 (1999)Cite this article

Abstract

Gadolinium is accepted to be one of the four ferromagnetic elements, along with iron, cobalt and nickel, although its Curie point, TC (the temperature above which ferromagnetism is lost), is only 292 K. Ferro-magnets exhibit a characteristic divergence of their susceptibility at TC, but no such divergence in any direction is found for needle-shaped crystals of gadolinium. Instead, the susceptibility diverges at a lower spin-reorientation temperature, Tsr, of 225 K, where the anisotropy changes sign. We propose that the magnetic order between Tsr and TC is not truly ferromagnetic, but is akin to the incommensurate order found in erbium.

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Figure 1: Magnetic susceptibility of a gadolinium crystal.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Physics Department, Trinity College, Dublin, 2, Ireland

    J.M.D. Coey, V. Skumryev & K. Gallagher

Authors

  1. J.M.D. Coey
  2. V. Skumryev
  3. K. Gallagher

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Coey, J., Skumryev, V. & Gallagher, K. Is gadolinium really ferromagnetic?. Nature 401, 35–36 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1038/43363

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