29:130 ELECTRICITY AND MAGNETISM II

SPRING 2013

MAGNETIC MATERIALS
Just as a dielectric contains electric dipoles that contribute to the
electric field, magnetic materials contain magnetic dipoles.
Magnetic materials are generally classified in three types:
diamagnetic
paramagnetic
ferromagnetic

Diamagnetic materials. These contain no permanent

dipoles, but only dipoles that are induced by an external magnetic
field. The atoms in a substance contain electrons that are free in a
sense to move about inside the atom. When a diamagnetic
material is placed in a region in which a magnetic field changes in
time, currents are induced following the general law of
electromagnetic induction (which we will take up in Chapter 7).
This effect can occur in any material. The electrons in the material
respond to this B(t) by circulating about the field (current). By
Lenzs law, these currents are in a direction to oppose the
changing magnetic field, and thus the induced dipole moment is
opposite to B. The term diamagnetic is used to describe any
situation in which a magnetic field is excluded from a region.

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 Paramagnetic materials. These contain atoms having
permanent magnetic dipoles, but which are usually randomly
oriented in the absence of a magnetic field. When placed in a
magnetic field, the atomic dipoles experience a torque,
N = m x B, that tends to align them along B. The tendency to
align is countered by thermal motions, so that the resulting
macroscopic dipole moment of the material is proportional to B /
T, where T is the absolute temperature. When paramagnetism
exists it is usually great enough to mask the diamagnetism which
is always present, and which has the opposite sign.
The permanent magnetic moments in paramagnetic
materials arise in two ways. First, the orbital motion of the
electrons in atoms gives rise to a permanent circulating current,
resulting in a magnetic dipole. These internal atomic currents
were first postulated by Ampere, and are called Amperian
currents. Of course, the existence of atoms was not known at the
time of Ampere, and these currents must be explained by the
laws of quantum mechanics. Secondly, we now know that
electrons possess an intrinsic spin magnetic moment. Spin is just
another characteristic property of electrons similar to mass or
charge. The electron spins are always paired (Pauli principle) but
any atom having an unbalanced moment of spinning electrons
will be paramagnetic. In materials having atoms with an even
number of electrons, there is no net magnetic moment, and the
atoms are diamagnetic.

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 Ferromagnetic materials.Ferromagnetism is really an
extreme case of paramagnetism. If the permanent dipoles
resulting from the electron spin are very close together in the
medium, there is a quantum mechanical effect, called exchange
which results in a strong tendency for the spins of adjacent atoms
or molecules to line up parallel to each other, even in the absence
of a magnetic field. This parallel orientation can extend, in an
unmagnetized body, over volumes of a considerable atomic scale.
Such a volume containing parallel orientation of magnetic dipoles,
is called a domain. An ordinary unmagnetized ferromagnetic
body contains many domains, each with a strong magnetic
moment, but oriented in different directions. In the presence of an
external magnetic field, the domains change the orientation of
their permanent magnetic moments, lining up with the external
magnetic field, until finally when the external magnetic field
reaches a certain large value, the moment reaches a limit when
all moments are parallel. This limit is called saturation.
Reversing the external field reverses the moments, but this
reorientation is countered by an effect similar to friction, so that
by the time the external field is reduced to zero, there can still be
a considerable magnetic moment. This is the origin of permanent
magnetism. If the external field is reversed alternately between
one direction and the other, the magnetic moment lags behind
the field, resulting in the phenomenon of hysteresis.
Ferromagnetism tends to decrease with temperature, and
the individual domains loose their magnetic moments at a critical

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temperature known as the
Curie temperature. The origin of this temperature effect is
thermal agitation which opposes the tendency toward orientation.