%0 Journal Article %T Ferrimagnetic spin-1/2 chain of alternating Ising and Heisenberg spins in arbitrarily oriented magnetic field %A J. Stre£¿ka %A M. Hagiwara %A Y. Han %A T. Kida %J Condensed Matter Physics %D 2012 %I Institute for Condensed Matter Physics %X The ferrimagnetic spin-1/2 chain composed of alternating Ising and Heisenberg spins in an arbitrarily oriented magnetic field is exactly solved using the spin-rotation transformation and the transfer-matrix method. It is shown that the low-temperature magnetization process depends basically on a spatial orientation of the magnetic field. A sharp stepwise magnetization curve with a marked intermediate plateau, which emerges for the magnetic field applied along the easy-axis direction of the Ising spins, becomes smoother and the intermediate plateau shrinks if the external field is tilted from the easy-axis direction. The magnetization curve of a polycrystalline system is also calculated by performing powder averaging of the derived magnetization formula. The proposed spin-chain model brings an insight into high-field magnetization data of 3d-4f bimetallic polymeric compound Dy(NO3)(DMSO)2Cu(opba)(DMSO)2, which provides an interesting experimental realization of the ferrimagnetic chain composed of two different but regularly alternating spin-1/2 magnetic ions Dy3+ and Cu2+ that are reasonably approximated by the notion of Ising and Heisenberg spins, respectively. %K ferrimagnetic spin chain %K exact results %K magnetization plateau %K 3d-4f bimetallic compound %U http://dx.doi.org/10.5488/CMP.15.43002