Ac-susceptibility investigations of superspin blocking and freezing in interacting magnetic nanoparticle ensembles.

We have investigated the effect of dipolar interactions on the superspin blocking and freezing of 9 nm average size Fe3O4 magnetic nanoparticle ensembles. Our dynamic susceptibility data reveals a two-regime behavior of the blocking temperature, T(B), upon diluting a Fe3O4/hexane magnetic fluid. As the nanoparticle volume ratio, Φ, is reduced from an as-prepared reference Φ = 1 to Φ = 1/96, the blocking temperature decreases from 46.