Critical behavior of ferromagnetic Ising thin films

In the present work, we study the magnetic properties and critical behavior of simple cubic ferromagnetic thin films. We simulate L x L x d films with semifree boundary conditions on the basis of the Monte Carlo method and the Ising model with nearest neighbor interactions. A Metropolis dynamics was implemented to carry out the energy minimization process. For different film thickness, in the nanometer range, we compute the temperature dependence of the magnetization, the magnetic susceptibility and the fourth order Binder's cumulant. Bulk and surface contributions of these quantities are computed in a differentiated fashion. Additionally, according to finite size scaling theory, we estimate the critical exponents for the correlation length, magnetic susceptibility, and magnetization. Results reveal a strong dependence of critical temperature and critical exponents on the film thickness. The obtained critical exponents are finally compared to those reported in literature for thin films. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.