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

Abstract

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 tuned using different growth geometries and post growth treatments. The previously adopted mechanism of 180^{o} domain wall nucleation clearly fails to explain the observed 180^{o} magnetization reversal. A new reversal mechanism with two successive domain wall nucleations consistently predicts the switching fields for all field orientations. Our results are relevant for a correct interpretation of magnetization reversal in many other epitaxial metallic and semiconducting thin films.

4 pages, 4 figures

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Cited by in corpus (7)

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• Study of magnetism in MgO/FeCoB/MgO trilayers using x-ray standing wave techniques
• Magnetically switchable spin wave retarder with $90^{\circ }$ antiferromagnetic domain wall
• Magnetization reversal in Fe(001) films grown by magnetic field assisted molecular beam epitaxy
• Engineering Magnetic Anisotropy in Permalloy Films via Atomic Force Nanolithography
• Probing anisotropy in epitaxial Fe/Pt bilayers by spin-orbit torque ferromagnetic resonance
• Real-time MOKE microscopy made simple