Low temperature Mössbauer studies on magnetic nanocomposites

Abstract. Nanocomposites with magnetic components possessing nanometric dimensions, lying in the range 1–10 nm, are found to be exhibiting superior physical properties with respect to their coarser sized counter-parts. Magnetic nanocomposites based on gamma iron oxide embedded in a polymer matrix have been prepa-red and characterized. The behaviour of these samples at low temperatures have been studied using Mössbauer spectroscopy. Mössbauer studies indicate that the composites consist of very fine particles of g-Fe2O3 of which some amount exists in the superparamagnetic phase. The cycling of the preparative conditions were found to increase the amount of g-Fe2O3 in the matrix