Thickness Dependency of Ferromagnetic Domains in CoPt Multilayers

Ferromagnetic materials have been providing and still provide large potential technological interests, especially in the data storage industry. We use Atomic and Magnetic Force Microscopy (AFM/ MFM) to study the influence of the film thickness on domain morphology in Co/Pt multilayers. While AFM is sensitive to the topography of the film, MFM allows the imaging of magnetic domains through an interaction between a sharp magnetic probe and the stray fields emanating from the sample in the perpendicular direction. Through this technique we have obtained AFM and MFM images of Co/Pt multilayers ranging from 4A to 60A and have found that as the thickness of the Co/Pt multilayers influences the morphology (periodicity, orientation, and correlation length etc.) of the magnetic domains.