The competitive effect of non-magnetic defect and films thickness on the ferromagnetic critical temperature in Ising thin-films

Abstract

In this work, Monte Carlo simulation was employed to investigate the competitive effect of non-magnetic defects and the thickness on the ferromagnetic behavior of Ising spins in a reduced geometry, i.e. thin-films. The magnetic properties were investigated as functions of temperature, defect concentration, and films’ thickness, especially in the ferromagnetic phase transition region. The finite size scaling was performed via the fourth order cumulant of the magnetization to extract the critical temperatures. From the results, the extracted critical temperatures agree well with previous theoretical investigation, where applicable. With increasing concentration of the nonmagnetic defects, the Ising phase-transition-point slightly shifts towards lower temperature, while the increase of films thickness enhances the critical temperature value. Being confirmed by the main-effect-plot analysis, the increase in thickness has much greater influences on the critical temperature than that of the defect concentration, which could be described in term of the average ferromagnetic interaction spin. As the role of the defect is negligence in the range of considered defect concentration (up to ten percent), it therefore suggests that the preparation of ferromagnetic films can be done in normal operating condition where defects usually occur. It may be not economically worth to aim for the perfectly smooth films when the associated application operates at temperatures away from the critical point.