Experiments on Interlayer Exchange Coupling

• Authors: P. Grünberg , M. Schaefer , K. Takanashi , U. Rücker , J. Nassar , I. Mertig
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

The results of various experiments on interlayer exchange coupling will be reviewed. After a general discussion of the theoretical understanding we deal first with 90°-type coupling and show that two mechanisms proposed by Slonczewski can explain our measured data. We furthermore study the coupling of Fe films across Cu_{x}Au_{1-x} alloys. For the composition with x=0.5, the coupling strength strongly increases with annealing. We believe that this is due to an order-disorder structural transformation in the Cu_{x}Au_{1-x} alloy. Finally, we present results on epitaxially grown bilayers Fe/EuS(100) and trilayers Fe/EuS/Fe(100). In the latter at room temperature we observe a strong decrease in the coupling strength as a function of the interlayer thickness, with a characteristic length of about 0.1 nm. At low temperatures in the bilayer we find an antiferromagnetic coupling between Fe and the adjacent ferromagnetic EuS.

Keywords

EN

75.70.Cn   75.30.Et   75.70.-i  

• Publisher: Institute of Physics, Polish Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Acta Physica Polonica A
• Year: 1997
• Volume: 91
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 7-14

Dates

published

1997-01