MOSCOW, October 20. /TASS/. Researchers from the Siberian Federal University (SFU) together with colleagues from Moscow and South Korea identified the properties of nanocomposites based on carbon nanotubes and magnetic material lanthanum-strontium manganite (LSMO), the SFU press office said. The scientists have modeled the influence of deformation of carbon nanotubes and geometrical parameters of nanocomposites on its magnetic and chemical properties.
Such nanocomposites might be applied to creating new spintronic devices where the current is formed not by electron but by spin flow. The spin is an intrinsic moment of momentum of a particle characterizing the behavior of the microsystem. Using spintronics, one can create magnetoresistive random-access memory (MRAM) which serves longer and operates faster than widely used FLASH-memory or other related devices.
"Due to the wide variety of composite materials, it is of great importance to model them theoretically and preselect the most prospective ones to test them in practice. In this study, we applied quantum-chemical methods of modeling to study nanocomposites of carbon nanotubes with lanthanum-strontium manganite (LSMO). We examined various relative spatial arrangements and the influence of the LSMO surface on electronic and magnetic properties of nanocomposite," commented Yevgeniya Kovaleva, the study’s coauthor and research assistant at SFU.
The researchers discovered that the key role in the formation of composite between carbon structures and LSMO belongs to manganese atoms. In addition, research has shown that the interaction of manganese atoms of LSMO and carbon of nanotubes results in complex magnetic assembling in the material.
The results of the study will be published in upcoming issue of "Computational Materials Science."