Vibrating Sample Magnetometry

A magnetometer is an instrument to measure the magnitude and direction of a magnetic field. The most commonly used magnetometric technique to characterize magnetic materials is vibrating sample magnetometry (VSM). VSMs can measure the magnetic properties of magnetically soft (low coercivity) and hard (high coercivity) materials in many forms: solids, powders, single crystals, thin films, or liquids. They can be used to perform measurements from low to high magnetic fields employing electromagnets, Halbach rotating permanent magnet arrays, or high-field superconducting magnets. They can be used to perform measurements from very low to very high temperatures with integrated cryostats or furnaces, respectively. And, they possess a dynamic range extending from 10 −8 emu (10 −11 Am 2 ) to above 10 3 emu (1 Am 2 ), enabling them to measure materials that are both weakly magnetic (ultrathin films, nanoscale structures, etc.) and strongly magnetic (permanent magnets). In this chapter, we will discuss the VSM measurement technique and its implementation in an electromagnet. We will also discuss relevant extensions of the technique that provide variable temperature capability, a vector VSM for magnetic anisotropy studies, and implementation of data acquisition algorithms for first-order reversal curve (FORC) measurements for characterizing magnetic interactions and coercivity distributions in magnetic materials. We will present typical measurement results over a range of experimental conditions for various materials to demonstrate the VSM capability for magnetic materials characterization.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Lake Shore Cryotronics, Inc., Westerville, OH, USA Brad Dodrill & Jeffrey R. Lindemuth
  1. Brad Dodrill