Giant magnetic anisotropy at the nanoscale: Overcoming the superparamagnetic limit

It has been observed for palladium and gold nanoparticles that the magnetic moment at a constant applied field does not change with temperature over the range comprised between 5 and 300 K. These samples, with sizes smaller than 2.5 nm, exhibit remanent magnetization up to room temperature. The existence of permanent magnetism up to so high temperatures has been explained as due to the blocking of a local magnetic moment by giant magnetic anisotropies. In this Brief Report we show, by analyzing the anisotropy of thiol capped gold films, that the orbital momentum induced at the surface conduction electrons is crucial to understand the observed giant anisotropy. The orbital motion is driven by a localized charge and/or spin through spin- orbit interaction, which reaches extremely high values at the surfaces. The induced orbital moment gives rise to an effective field of the order of 10(3) T that is responsible for the giant anisotropy.