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Answer in Brief · Q7

Q.What happens to a ferromagnetic material when its temperature increases above its Curie temperature?

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Ferromagnetism depends on a strong exchange coupling that locks the moments of all atoms within a domain into a common direction (section 11.5.3). As temperature rises, this exchange coupling weakens, progressively distorting the domain structure; at the material's Curie temperature TCT_C, the domain structure collapses entirely, and above TCT_C the material simply behaves like an ordinary paramagnetic substance, with atomic moments once again randomised by thermal agitation in the absence of a field. Its susceptibility above TCT_C follows the Curie-Weiss law, χ=CT−TC\chi=\dfrac{C}{T-T_C}, the direct generalisation of the ordinary paramagnetic Curie's law. The material's atoms have not lost their individual magnetic moments -- what is lost, permanently above TCT_C, is the domain organisation that made the bulk material strongly, cooperatively magnetic. [!ANSWER] It becomes paramagnetic (the domain structure is destroyed).

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