Meteorite - Tetrataenite

Understanding of the (paleo)magnetism of extraterrestrial materials such as meteorites is of great interest to today's society for future industrial and research applications and fundamental knowledge. The different magnetic phases in meteorites, due to their unique magnetic properties, have great potential to be used as chronological markers, to understand the magnetic evolution of meteorites. Thus, the study of meteorite paleomagnetism can provide insight into the history of the solar system. Furthermore, fundamental knowledge of the evolution of magnetic phases and their formation under specific chemical, thermal and magnetic conditions deliver valuable insight that is useful for development of future permanent magnets. An example is the fundamental understanding of the tetrataenite phase, which is of great interest for development of new generation of rare-earth-elements-free permanent magnets. In this study, the two iron-nickel meteorites -Aletai and Canyon Diablo are investigated in order to provide a deeper understanding of the unique magnetic and non-magnetic phases within typical iron-nickel meteorites to evaluate paleomagnetic features using complementary spatially resolved magnetic imaging techniques (MOKE and UHV MOKE). For correlative analysis, petrography with SEM, STEM, ToF-SIMS, XPS, SPEM and Raman shift spectroscopy were carried out to investigate correlative surface-bulk-magnetism relationship.