Structure and magnetism of Fe-Co alloy nanoparticles

[Z. Klencsar]

Fe-Co binary alloys are renowned for their extreme high levels of magnetization under ambient conditions. We have undertaken a successful hydrothermal synthesis of Fe-Co alloys in the nanoparticle form, and elucidated its atomic level structure by the means of several experimental techniques. The corresponding results have been published as

Z. Klencsár, P. Németh, Z. Sándor, T. Horváth, I.E. Sajó, S. Mészáros, J. Mantilla, J.A.H. Coaquira, V.K. Garg, E. Kuzmann, Gy. Tolnai:
Structure and magnetism of Fe-Co alloy nanoparticles, Journal of Alloys and Compounds 674 (2016) 153.

The final publication can be accessed via the link http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jallcom.2016.03.068 .

The authors' version of the work can be downloaded directly from here: http://www.esr.hu/aam/aam_jalcom_2016.pdf
The work is also associated with a supplementary material that can be downloaded from here: http://www.esr.hu/aam/aam_jalcom_2016_supplement.pdf

From the plants' point of view Fe-Co alloys are intriguing among others because the two constituting metals are expected to have very different effects on them: iron uptake should be beneficial while Co uptake could be toxic to plants. But is uptake of these metals from Fe-Co alloy nanoparticles possible at all for the plants? We will know more about this soon as experiments have already begun with cucumber plants...