Hamburg 2001 – scientific programme
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AM: Magnetismus
AM 16: Dünne Schichten III
AM 16.9: Talk
Friday, March 30, 2001, 12:15–12:30, S 5.2
Propagation of a magnetic domain wall in the presence of AFM fabricated nanostructures — •Hans Werner Schumacher1, Dafine Ravelosona1, Joerg Wunderlich1, Fenglei Cayssol1, Claude Chappert1, Veronique Mathet1, Jean-Pierre Jamet2, Jaques Ferre2, Andre Thiaville2 und Rolf J. Haug3 — 1Institut d’Electronique Fondamentale, Universite Paris Sud, F-91405 Orsay, France — 2Laboratoire de Physique des Solides, Universite Paris Sud, F-91405 Orsay, France — 3Institut fuer Festkoerperphysik, Universitaet Hannover, Appelstr. 2, D-30167 Hannover
We control the magnetization reversal process in Pt/Co/Pt ultra thin film devices by adding mesoscopic defects created using atomic force microscope (AFM) lithography. Holes and grooves locally cutting the Co layer are written by direct mechanical indentation of the metal samples by the AFM tip. The smallest lateral feature size of these artificial structures (down to 20 nm for a hole) is comparable to the intrinsic Barkhausen length ( 25 nm) of the films. The influence of the AFM fabricated structures on the magnetization reversal process in micron sized devices was studied by Kerr microscopy and extraordinary Hall effect measurements. Single point defects act as mesosocopic domain wall pinning centers, while lines effectively block the domain wall propagation. To study the influence of well characterized defects should help to understand better the magnetization reversal processes in our films.