Orbital and spin magnetic moments of transforming one-dimensional iron inside metallic and semiconducting carbon nanotubes

The orbital and spin magnetic properties of iron inside metallic and semiconducting carbon nanotubes are studied by means of local x-ray magnetic circular dichroism (XMCD) and bulk superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID). The iron-nanotube hybrids are initially ferrocene filled single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNT) of different metallicities. We show that the ferrocene's molecular orbitals interact differently with the SWCNT of different metallicities with no significant XMCD response. At elevated temperatures the ferrocene molecules react with each other to form cementite nanoclusters. The XMCD at various magnetic fields reveal that the orbital and/or spin magnetic moments of the encapsulated iron are altered drastically as the transformation to the 1D clusters takes place. The orbital and spin magnetic moments are both found to be larger in filled semiconducting nanotubes than in the metallic sample. This could mean that the magnetic polarization of the encapsulated material depends on the metallicity of the tubes. From a comparison between the iron 3d magnetic moments and the bulk magnetism measured by SQUID, we conclude that the delocalized magnetisms dominate the magnetic properties of these 1D hybrid nanostructures.