There are two main thrusts towards new permanent-magnet materials: improving extrinsic properties by nanostructuring and intrinsic properties by atomic structuring. Theory-both numerical and analytical-plays an important role in this ambitious research. Our analysis of aligned hard-soft nanostructures shows that soft-in-hard geometries are better than hard-in-soft geometries and that embedded soft spheres are better than sandwiched soft layers. Concerning the choice of the hard phase, both a high magnetization and a high anisotropy are necessary. As an example of first-principle research, we consider interatomic Mn exchange in MnAl and find strongly ferromagnetic intralayer exchange, in spite of the small Mn-Mn distances.

The temperature dependence of saturation magnetization of ferrite nanoparticles has been studied to investigate the applicability of Bloch spin-wave theory to the finite-size systems. T 3/2 law is valid above ∼75 K for the smallest ferrite particles obtained in this experiment having size of ∼2.5 nm. The region of validity of Bloch law increases at the lower-temperature end with the increase in particle size and interparticle interactions. The anomaly from the spinwave theory has been observed with an upturn at low temperature, which can be explained by considering the quantization of spin-wave spectrum due to the finite size of the particles.

The magnetic ground states in highly ordered double perovskites LaSr1−xCaxNiReO6 (x = 0.0, 0.5, 1.0) are studied in view of the Goodenough-Kanamori rules of superexchange interactions in this paper. In LaSrNiReO6, Ni and Re sublattices are found to exhibit curious magnetic states separately, but no long range magnetic ordering is achieved. The magnetic transition at ~255 K is identified with the independent Re sublattice magnetic ordering. Interestingly, the sublattice interactions are tuned by modifying the Ni-O-Re bond angles through Ca doping. Upon Ca doping, the Ni and Re sublattices start to display a ferrimagnetically ordered state at low temperature. The neutron powder diffraction data reveals long range ferrimagnetic ordering of the Ni and Re magnetic sublattices along the crystallographic b-axis. The transition temperature of the ferrimagnetic phase increases monotonically with increasing Ca concentration.

Formation of chemically ordered compounds of Fe and Au is inhibited in bulk materials due to their limited mutual solubility. However, here we report the formation of chemically ordered L12-type Fe3Au and FeAu3 compounds in Fe-Au sub-10 nm nanoparticles, suggesting that they are equilibrium structures in size-constrained systems. The stability of these L12-ordered Fe3Au and FeAu3 compounds along with a previously discovered L10-ordered FeAu has been explained by a size-dependent equilibrium thermodynamic model. Furthermore, the spin ordering of these three compounds has been computed using ab initio first-principle calculations. All ordered compounds exhibit a substantial magnetization at room temperature. The Fe3Au had a high saturation magnetization of about 143.6 emu/g with a ferromagnetic spin structure. The FeAu3 nanoparticles displayed a low saturation magnetization of about 11 emu/g. This suggests a antiferromagnetic spin structure, with the net magnetization arising from uncompensated surface spins. First-principle calculations using the Vienna ab initio simulation package (VASP) indicate that ferromagnetic ordering is energetically most stable in Fe3Au, while antiferromagnetic order is predicted in FeAu and FeAu3, consistent with the experimental results.