Abstract

Magnetic properties of a single nanotube whose walls are constituted by nanograins of La2/3Sr1/3MnO3 are studied by means of Monte Carlo (MC) simulation. The system is considered as composed by ferromagnetic grains which couple via dipolar interaction. The grain size distribution is obtained from experimental measurements and the inter-grain distance distribution is obtained from a study of distance distribution among magnetic particles distributed in the tube walls. We show the magnetization behavior for a tube of 700 nm of diameter and 3.5 μm length. We discuss the simulation for different temperatures and external fields. As a main result, we show that the distribution of inter-granular distances has a unique behavior for tubular structures of similar diameter/length aspect ratio, independent of their sizes. This scaling relation allows us to perform the simulations using a tube of smaller dimensions. We succeed in explaining the magnetization curves, finding that dipolar interaction is necessary to explain the experimental behavior and that the grains behave as having magnetic dead layers. © 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.