Magnetic and all-optical switching properties of amorphousTbxCo100−xalloys

Applied Trends in Magnetic Rare Earth/Transition Metal Alloys and Multilayers

“…This GdFeCo alloy was chosen because of its strong Faraday rotation that facilitates following the dynamics of the spins by using optical magnetometers, but also because it was thought that the polarization of the laser beam had the ability to act on the spins via the inverse Faraday effect, in a similar way to the external field, therefore inducing the switching. In 2012 and 2013, the same effect was found in different RE–TM alloys such as TbFe [ 106 ] or TbCo [ 107 , 108 , 109 ]. In 2014 it was extended to multilayers and other heterostructures such as Pt/Gd/Co trilayers [ 110 ] and others without RE, but always with ferrimagnetic coupling [ 111 ].…”

Direction‐Sensitive Magnetophotonic Surface Crystals

“…Second, they can exhibit strong perpendicular magnetic anisotropy yet with an amorphous texture. [27][28][29][30][31] For instance, carefully engineered Co/Pt multilayered nanodots, having large interfacial spin-orbit coupling with perpendicular magnetic anisotropy, demonstrate tenfold enhancements in MO activity and demonstrate the great potential of out-of-plane magnetic anisotropy materials for magnetoplasmonics. [32] The amorphous texture of RE-TM alloys greatly simplifies the otherwise stringent requirements on material microstructure for obtaining these highly desired magnetic properties.…”

“…As such, they can be grown on noble metals like Au with minimal residual stresses, and with highly smooth interfaces, thereby maintaining much of their original magnetic properties even after patterning. [27] Importantly, with perpendicular magnetic anisotropy, the remnant magnetization state of the magnetic nanostructures can be designed to be parallel to the light propagation direction for normal light incidence, greatly simplifying potential practical applications of magnetoplasmonic crystals. This allows one to explore their MO functionality (such as, tunable Faraday effect) directly, that is, without the need of external magnetic fields to stabilize the magnetization along the out-of-plane axis.…”

“…This allows one to explore their MO functionality (such as, tunable Faraday effect) directly, that is, without the need of external magnetic fields to stabilize the magnetization along the out-of-plane axis. Third, ferrimagnetic alloys such as Tb 18 Co 82 have recently experienced extensive interest due to the demonstration of enhanced spin-orbit torques [33][34][35] and all-optical switching, [27,[35][36][37] allowing for zero-field magnetic switching, on picosecond timescales, with the use of pulsed lasers. Thus, demonstrating the compatibility of these materials with nanoantennas is essential for the development of nanoscale (i.e., subdiffraction) all-optical switching technologies.…”

“…al. [27] for a previous study of the magnetic and MO properties of the TbCo system. We opted here for a Tb 18 Co 82 composition to obtain the perpendicular magnetic anisotropy, while not overly compensating the magnetization.…”