Effects of Interlayer Coupling in Elongated Ni80Fe20/Au/Co Nanorings

We describe the magnetization reversal processes in multilayer elongated Ni80 [subscript 80] Fe20 [subscript 20](10 nm)/Au(t = 0 to 20 nm)/ Co(20 nm)/Si(001) nanorings. For a field applied in-plane along the long axis, the hysteresis loops display a two-step switching for both t = 0 nm and 2 nm, and...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Ren, Yang, Adeyeye, Adekunle Olusola, Nam, C. H., Ross, Caroline A.
Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Materials Science and Engineering
Format: Article
Language:en_US
Published: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers 2011
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/62015
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2262-1249
Description
Summary:We describe the magnetization reversal processes in multilayer elongated Ni80 [subscript 80] Fe20 [subscript 20](10 nm)/Au(t = 0 to 20 nm)/ Co(20 nm)/Si(001) nanorings. For a field applied in-plane along the long axis, the hysteresis loops display a two-step switching for both t = 0 nm and 2 nm, and a three-step switching for t = 10 nm and 20 nm. Onion-to-vortex and vortex-to-reverse onion state transitions occur for a thin Au spacer due to strong exchange coupling between the layers. For a thick Au spacer layer, the Ni80 [subscript 80] Fe20 [subscript 20] layer switches first, then a two-step reversal of the Co, correlated with domain motion in the Ni80 [subscript 80] Fe20 [subscript 20], occurs without the formation of vortex states as a result of magnetostatic interactions. There is a good agreement between the experimental results and micromagnetic simulations.