Spin canting due to structural disorder in maghemite

The spin-canting effect has been studied in samples of maghemite particles with the same width of about 100 nm, but different length and with different degree of cation disorder. Mossbauer spectra obtained at 5 K with a magnetic field of 4 T applied parallel to the propagation direction of the gamma rays showed that there is a correlation between the degree of structural disorder and the spin-canting effect. The results show that the observed spin canting is not a surface effect, but that atoms in the interior of the particles can be significantly influenced by canting effects.