Spin-glass-like behavior of uncompensated surface spins in NiO nanoparticulated powder

Nickel oxide nanoparticles successfully synthesized by a polymer precursor method are studied in this work. The analysis of X-ray powder diffraction data provides a mean crystallite size of 22±2 nm which is in a good agreement with the mean size estimated from transmission electron microscopy images. Whereas the magnetization (M) vs. magnetic field (H) curve obtained at 5 K is consistent with a ferromagnetic component which coexists with an antiferromagnetic component, the presence of two peaks in the zero-field-cooled trace suggests the occurrence of two blocking process. The broad maximum at high temperature was associated with the thermal relaxation of uncompensated spins at the particle core and the low temperature peak was assigned to the freeze of surface spins clusters. Static and dynamic magnetic results suggest that the correlations of surface spins clusters show a spin-glass-like behavior below T_g=7.3±0.1 K with critical exponents zν=9.7±0.5 and β=0.7±0.1, which are consistent with typical values reported for spin-glass systems.