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Magnetic anisotropy and reversal in epitaxial Fe/MgO(001) films

2009; American Physical Society; Volume: 80; Issue: 9 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1103/physrevb.80.094416

1550-235X

Qingfeng Zhan, Stijn Vandezande, K. Temst, Chris Van Haesendonck,

Magnetic Properties of Alloys

We investigate the magnetization reversal in Fe/MgO(001) films with fourfold in-plane magnetic anisotropy and an additional uniaxial anisotropy whose orientation and strength are altered using different growth geometries and postgrowth treatments. The previously adopted mechanism of $180\ifmmode^\circ\else\textdegree\fi{}$ domain-wall nucleation clearly fails to explain the observed $180\ifmmode^\circ\else\textdegree\fi{}$ magnetization reversal in Fe/MgO(001) films. We introduce a reversal mechanism with two successive domain-wall nucleations to consistently predict the switching fields of Fe/MgO(001) films for all field orientations with one set of values for domain-wall nucleation energies and uniaxial anisotropy.