Anomalous Nernst effect in stressed magnetostrictive film grown onto flexible substrate.

The anomalous Nernst effect in nanostructured magnetic materials is a key phenomenon to optimally control and employ the internal energy dissipated in electronic devices, being dependent on, for instance, the magnetic anisotropy of the active element. Thereby, here, we report a theoretical and experimental investigation of the magnetic properties and anomalous Nernst effect in a flexible magnetostrictive film with induced uniaxial magnetic anisotropy and under external stress. Specifically, we calculate the magnetization behavior and the thermoelectric voltage response from a theoretical approach for a planar geometry, with magnetic free energy density that takes into account the induced uniaxial and magnetoelastic anisotropy contributions. Experimentally, we verify modifications of the effective magnetic anisotropy by changing the external stress, and explore the anomalous Nernst effect, a powerful tool to investigate the magnetic properties of magnetostrictive materials. We find quantitative agreement between experiment and numerical calculations, thus elucidating the magnetic behavior and thermoelectric voltage response. Besides, we provide evidence to confirm the validity of the theoretical approach to describe the magnetic properties and anomalous Nernst effect in ferromagnetic magnetostrictive films having uniaxial magnetic anisotropy and submitted to external stress. Hence, the results place flexible magnetostrictive systems as promising candidates for active elements in functionalized touch electronic devices.

Playing with universality classes of Barkhausen avalanches.

Many systems crackle, from earthquakes and financial markets to Barkhausen effect in ferromagnetic materials. Despite the diversity in essence, the noise emitted in these dynamical systems consists of avalanche-like events with broad range of sizes and durations, characterized by power-law avalanche distributions and typical average avalanche shape that are fingerprints describing the universality class of the underlying avalanche dynamics. Here we focus on the crackling noise in ferromagnets and scrutinize the traditional statistics of Barkhausen avalanches in polycrystalline and amorphous ferromagnetic films having different thicknesses. We show how scaling exponents and average shape of the avalanches evolve with the structural character of the materials and film thickness. We find quantitative agreement between experiment and theoretical predictions of models for the magnetic domain wall dynamics, and then elucidate the universality classes of Barkhausen avalanches in ferromagnetic films. Thereby, we observe for the first time the dimensional crossover in the domain wall dynamics and the outcomes of the interplay between system dimensionality and range of interactions governing the domain wall dynamics on Barkhausen avalanches.