We report on a strong perpendicular magnetic anisotropy in [CoFe 0.4nm/Pd t] 6 (t = 1.0-2.0 nm) multilayers fabricated by DC sputtering in a ultrahigh vacuum chamber. Saturation magnetization, M s , and uniaxial anisotropy, K u , of the multilayers decrease with increasing the spacing thickness, with a M s of 155 emu/cc and a K u of 1.14×10 5 J/m 3 at a spacing thickness of t = 2 nm. X-ray absorption spectroscopy and X-ray magnetic circular dichroism measurements reveal that spin and orbital magnetic moments of Co and Fe in CoFe film decrease as function of Pd thickness, indicating the major contribution of surface/interfacial magnetism to the magnetic properties of the film.

Superlattice [Co90Fe10(0.21)/Pt(0.23)]n (unit in nm) with the repeat cycles n ranging from 3 to 30 were studied. Both effective anisotropy (Keff) and PMA constant (KU) reached a maximum at n=8. When the 3 nm Pt underlayer was deposited at low energy condition, the Keff and KU of (CoFe/Pt)8 are 4.0 and 6.1 Merg/cc, respectively. On the other hand, the Keff and KU increased to 6.8 and 9.7 Merg/cc, respectively, when the Pt underlayer deposited at high energy condition. As the n increases, the surface roughness monotonously increases and d111 inside the superlattice layers increase and relax from bottom to top part. The interface roughness and relaxation in superlattice reduce the PMA considerably.

We present a rotary-stage microwave probe station suitable for magnetic films and spintronic devices. Two stages, one for field rotation from parallel to perpendicular to the sample plane (Out-of-Plane) and the other intended for field rotation within the sample plane (In-Plane) have been designed. The sample, probes and micro positioners are rotated simultaneously with the stages, which allows the field orientation to cover θ from 0 to 90• and ϕ from 0 to 360• . θ and ϕ being the angle between the direction of current flow and field in a Out-of-Plane and an In-Plane rotation, respectively. The operation frequency is up to 40 GHz and the magnetic field up to 1 T. The sample holder, vision system and probe assembly are compactly designed for the probes to land on a wafer with diameter up to 3 cm. Using homemade multipin probes and commercially available high frequency probes, several applications including 4-probe DC measurements, the determination of domain wall velocity and spin transfer torque ferromagnetic resonance are demonstrated. 1 arXiv:1607.04356v1 [cond-mat.mtrl-sci]

Current induced domain wall motion in antiferromagnetically coupled (Co70Fe30/Pd) multilayer nanowires.

We report the investigation of spin polarized current induced domain wall (DW) displacement in the perpendicularly magnetized nanowires patterned on ultrathin CoFe/Pd multilayer films by anomalous Hall-effect measurement. We find that DWs can be driven to propagate in the nanowire by the threshold current density (Jth) as low as 5.2 × 1010 A/m2 under a bias field H = 115 Oe. The spin-torque efficiency ε = (1.68 ± 0.09) × 10−14 T·m2/A is derived by measuring the effective field (HJ) generated by the pulsed current as well as through the dependency of Jth on H from the DW depinning field experiment. Our result indicates that the current induced DW motion is essentially dominated by the non-adiabatic spin transfer torque effect and the non-adiabaticity factor β is estimated to be as high as 0.96 ± 0.04.

No abstract

Current induced domain wall (DW) motion has been investigated in a 600-nm wide nanowire using multilayer film with a structure of Ta

We report the studies of magnetization reversal and magnetic interlayer coupling in synthetic antiferromagnetic (SAF) [Pd/Co70Fe30]9/Ru(tRu)/Pd(tPd)/[Co70Fe30/Pd]9 structure as functions of inserted Pd layer (tPd) and Ru layer (tRu) thicknesses. We found the exchange coupling field (Hex) and perpendicular magnetic anisotropy (PMA) can be controlled by both the tPd and tRu, The Hex shows a Ruderman-Kittel-Kasuya-Yosida-type oscillatory decay dependence on tRu and a maximum interlayer coupling strength Jex = 0.522 erg/cm2 is achieved at tPd + tRu ≈ 0.8 nm in the as-deposited sample. As it is known that a high post-annealing stability of SAF structure is required for magnetic random access memory applications, the dependence of Hex and PMA on the post-annealing temperature (Ta) is also investigated. We found that both high PMA of the top Co70Fe30/Pd multilayer is maintained and Hex is enhanced with increasing Ta up to 350 °C for tRu > 0.7 nm in our SAF structure.