Field-dependent behavior of a magnetic force microscopy tip probed by means of high coercive nanomagnets

Abstract

Single domain uniformly magnetized CoPt dots are used to probe magnetic force microscopy (MFM) tip characteristics. Magnetic contrasts obtained in MFM experiments are exploited to get the tip hysteresis loop in the influence of the dot. Coercivity, remnant magnetization, as well as details about the magnetization reversal of the tips are obtained. Well defined dot geometries allow a quantitative determination of the stray field of the dots acting on the tip. The tip’s hysteresis loop refers to an effective tip height, involved in the imaging, which is much larger than the extension of a magnetic domain of the CoCr tip coating. When MFM tips and sample dots have widely different characteristics, it is possible to get separate magnetic information, such as hysteresis loops, on both tip and sample, depending on the magnitude of the out-of-plane external field.

Magnetic force fields of isolated small nanoparticle clusters

“…This is in order to allow a 3D imaging of the magnetic field distribution generated by the magnetic nanostructure 39,45 . Moreover, a quantitative interpretation of the phase shift is also complex, since it depends on the detailed magnetic properties of the tip 46,47 . A few experimental studies have nevertheless proven feasible the extraction of quantitative information, such as magnetization or coercive fields, providing that the exact spatial distribution of the tip magnetization is known [48][49][50][51] .…”

Magnetic Force Microscope Image Evaluation of Magnetic Iron Oxide Floppy Disc With Various Lift Heights

“…The interaction between the magnetic material on the tip and the sample makes the cantilever be straight and bent. [2][3][4][5].…”

Magnetic interactions in 2D and 3D arrays

“…This hinders the correct interpretation of MFM contrasts around topographic features [Chiolerio and Allia, 2012;Göddenhenrich et al, 1990;Raşa et al, 2002]. Moreover, image processing [Chiolerio et al, 2008[Chiolerio et al, , 2010Panchumarthy et al, 2013;Takekuma et al, 2002;Yu et al, 2003], such as filtering or averaging [Chiolerio and Allia, 2012;Chiolerio et al, 2010;Rastei et al, 2006], on liftmode MFM images may corrupt the entire MFM data with topography. In this chapter, we investigate the effects of these scan height variations and their cancellation via offline corrections.…”

“…For instance, Rastei et al [Rastei et al, 2006] measured how the stray fields of tip and sample affect their magnetizations mutually. In their local hysteresis loops, the MFM contrast is recorded in-field, while the tip interacts with a patterned island.…”