Impact of growth conditions on the domain nucleation and domain wall propagation in Pt/Co/Pt stacks

Abstract

Understanding and controlling the fabrication conditions of stacks with perpendicular magnetic anisotropy is a mandatory issue in order to achieve a memory device based on such principle. In that sense, the present work intends to demonstrate how the structural differences obtained by systematically varying the growth conditions may affect domain wall motion. Dealing with one prototypical system, such as Pt/Co/Pt, we have found that the magnetic properties, in particular the domain wall velocity, exhibit differences depending on substrate quality, magnetic layer thickness, and deposition atmosphere. Magneto-optical Kerr effect-based magnetometry and microscopy combined with X-ray reflectometry, atomic force microscopy and transmission electron microscopy were adopted as experimental techniques in order to elucidate the effect of growth conditions on domain wall dynamics.