Electron holography of magnetic materials

Electron holography, which visualizes magnetic and/or electric fields in materials on the nanometre scale, is a powerful tool for the study of fundamental issues in physics as well as the characterization of advanced materials. This paper presents an overview of recent electron holography studies on advanced magnetic materials, which include hard magnetic materials (both nucleation-type and pinning-type magnets), soft magnetic materials (both classical alloys and recently developed nanostructured materials), magnetic recording materials (Co-CoO tape and other related topics) and magnetic functional materials (ferromagnetic shape memory alloys and colossal magnetoresistive manganites).