Evaluation of effective magnetic anisotropy constant of magnetic nanoparticles from coercive field of AC magnetization curve

Magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs) have been widely studied for use in biomedical application with the magnetic anisotropy constant K playing an important role in determining the performance. We estimated K near room temperature from the coercive field H_c of an AC magnetization (M–H) curve. First, we performed numerical simulation of the AC M–H curve of immobilized MNPs and clarified the dependencies of H_c on the MNP parameters and excitation conditions. Based on the simulation result, we obtained an analytical expression for H_c that was more general and included the previously obtained expression; and in addition, it could be applied to an MNP sample with a core-size distribution. Next, we measured the AC M–H curves of two commercial MNP samples and determined the dependencies of H_c on the amplitude and frequency of the excitation field. The dependencies agreed reasonably well with the analytical results. The K value was evaluated to obtain the best fit between the measured and analytical H_c, and the obtained K values were consistent with those estimated using other methods. The temperature dependence of K near room temperature was also determined. The present method will provide a useful tool to estimate the K value of MNPs.