Magnetism of monomer MnO and heterodimer FePt@MnO nanoparticles

We report about the magnetic properties of antiferromagnetic (AF) MnO nanoparticles (NPs) with different sizes (6--19 nm). Using a combination of polarized neutron scattering and magnetometry, we were able to resolve previously observed peculiarities. Magnetometry, on the one hand, reveals a peak in the zero-field-cooled (ZFC) magnetization curves at low temperatures $(\ensuremath{\sim}25$ K) but $no$ feature around the N\'eel temperature at 118 K. On the other hand, polarized neutron scattering shows the expected behavior of the AF order parameter vanishing around 118 K. Moreover, hysteresis curves measured at various temperatures reveal an exchange-bias effect, indicating a coupling of an…