Interlayer coupling in Co/NiO/Fe trilayers studied by element-specific XMCD and XMLD effects

ORAL

Abstract

Co/NiO/Fe trilayers are grown on Ag(001) substrate using Molecular Beam Epitaxy (MBE). Element-specific magnetic domain images on both ferromagnetic (FM) Co and Fe layers and antiferromagnetic NiO layer are obtained using X-ray Magnetic Circular Dichrism (XMCD) and X-ray Linear Dichrism (XMLD), respectively. By comparing these magnetic domain images, we find that the Co-Fe interlayer coupling across the NiO spacer layer exhibits a transition from a 90$^{o}$-coupling to a collinear coupling as the NiO film thickness increases. This observation is shown to be directly related to the NiO magnetic structure and its interaction at the Co/NiO and NiO/Fe interfaces.

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Authors

  • J. Wu

    • Dept. of Physics, Univ. of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720

  • J. Choi

    • Dept. of Physics, Univ. of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720

  • C. Won

    • Dept. of Physics, Kyung Hee Univ., Seoul 130-701, Korea

  • A. Scholl

    • Advanced Light Source, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA 94720

  • A. Doran

    • Advanced Light Source, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA 94720

  • E. Arenholz

    • Advanced Light Source, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA 94720

  • Y.Z. Wu

    • Dept. of Physics, Fudan Univ., Shanghai 200433, P. R. China

  • X.F. Jin

    • Dept. of Physics, Fudan Univ., Shanghai 200433, P. R. China

  • Z.Q. Qiu

    • Dept. of Physics, Univ. of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720