Polymer-inorganic composite with ultradisperse gadolinium particles

The objects of investigation are polystyrene-based composites with ultradisperse particles (including nanoparticles) of metallic Gd and SiO₂. The composites prepared by milling starting materials in a barrel mill at room temperature are studied by the ferromagnetic resonance method, transmission electron microscopy (TEM), and reflection X-ray diffraction (RXD). It is found that the magnetic subsystem of the composites is formed by magnetic nanoclusters, Gd crystallites 30 ± 10 nm across, which possess volume and surface magnetic anisotropy and pass into the superparamagnetic state at 210 ± 10 K. It is also found that the Landau-Lifshitz equation with the damping term in the Landau-Lifshitz form provides the best quantitative fit to experimental data for the ferromagnetic resonance of superparamagnetic metal nanoparticles.