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SUPPLEMENTARY NOTESThe views, opinions and/or findings contained in this report are those of the author(s) and should not be construed as an official Department of the Army position, policy or decision, unless so designated by other documentation. A novel approach, linking microstructural effects, magnetic measurements, and signal processing methods, was developed to analyze, identify and compare magnetic materials. The Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT) was applied to DC remanent magnetization curves (RHL) and to Switching Field Distribution (SFD). It was shown analytically how the a n , b n Fourier coefficients depend on the width of SFD, on the coercivity, and on the highest applied field. The field and the coercivity dependences can be separated by using complex Fourier coefficients.The effects of magnetic and sampling parameters on the DFT were numerically simulated. Based on the results of the analytical and numerical study, a measurement and DFT protocol was developed to analyze magnetic materials. The sensitivity of DFT to magnetic markers was investigated numerically, by varying the matrix/marker ratio and the relative coercivities. The measurement and FFT protocol was applied to commercial magnetic media (DELTACARD, METROCARD) and Fe-Zn nanocomposites.The results are submitted to two international conferences. Participation in this complex research gave a significant contribution to the education of two graduate and one undergraduate students..
Motivation and objectivesMagnetic materials are extensively used in high technology, first of all, in information storage on tapes, disks, and magnetooptical media. Magnetic markers are used for fraud and theft prevention, identification, as in security tags, bank checks, and as currency markers. Most of the applications are based on particulate magnetic materials. For example, in traditional recording media, credit cards, key cards, or as thin film recording media with decoupled grains. Magnetic nanocomposites of small magnetic particles, embedded in a nonmagnetic matrix, are in focus of investigations for application in high density recording, pigments, absorbing microwave coatings, ferrofluids, magnetic refrigeration, etc.Depending on the actual application, different range of particle size (multidomain, single-domain, superparamagnetic) is preferred. Some application requires high size uniformity (narrow linewidth in microwave materials, broad linewidth in EM...