Interfacial spin clusters in CoFe/IrMn exchange bias multilayers

DOI

We propose to investigate the magnetic depth profile of an exchange biased (EB) CoFe/IrMn3 multilayer using polarized neutron reflectometry (PNR). Our recent studies on this system identify interfacial spin clusters as the main source for differences in exchange bias fields and magnetic hysteresis loop changes. The interfacial spin clusters themselves depend on the anisotropy and size of the antiferromagnetic (AF) grains which are determined by the crystallographic texture in IrMn3. We effectively tune this anisotropy by using different seed layers of NiCr (high IrMn3 texture) and Cu (low IrMn3 texture).The unique interfacial sensitivity of PNR will be used to detect the presence and field reversal characteristics of the spin clusters in Seed/IrMn3/CoFe multilayers. A defined magnetic setting procedure must be followed closely to align all AF grains and spin clusters. The first field reversal breaks the alignment of the ferromagnetic spins and the interface and the spin clusters and their contained magnetization become observable.

Identifier
DOI https://doi.org/10.5291/ILL-DATA.5-54-215
Metadata Access https://data.ill.fr/openaire/oai?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=oai_datacite&identifier=10.5291/ILL-DATA.5-54-215
Provenance
Creator Fernandez, Gonzalo Vallejo; Grady, Kevin; Saerbeck, Thomas
Publisher Institut Laue-Langevin
Publication Year 2018
Rights OpenAccess; info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
OpenAccess true
Representation
Resource Type Dataset
Size 8 GB
Version 1
Discipline Particles, Nuclei and Fields