Thermally active nanoparticle clusters enslaved by engineered domain wall traps.

ABSTRACT: The stable assembly of fluctuating nanoparticle clusters on a surface represents a technological challenge of widespread interest for both fundamental and applied research. Here we demonstrate a technique to stably confine in two dimensions clusters of interacting nanoparticles via size-tunable, virtual magnetic traps. We use cylindrical Bloch walls arranged to form a triangular lattice of ferromagnetic domains within an epitaxially grown ferrite garnet film. At each domain, the magnetic stray field generates an effective harmonic potential with a field tunable stiffness. The experiments are combined with theory to show that the magnetic confinement is effectively harmonic and pairwise interactions are of dipolar nature, leading to central, strictly repulsive forces. For clusters of magnet

SUBMITTER: Tierno P 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8490384 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature