Dual Behavior of Antiferromagnetic Uncompensated Spins in NiFe/IrMn Exchange Biased Bilayers

Abstract

We present a comprehensive study of the exchange bias effect in a model system. Through numerical analysis of the exchange bias and coercive fields as a function of the antiferromagnetic layer thickness we deduce the absolute value of the averaged anisotropy constant of the antiferromagnet. We show that the anisotropy of IrMn exhibits a finite size effect as a function of thickness. The interfacial spin disorder involved in the data analysis is further supported by the observation of the dual behavior of the interfacial uncompensated spins. Utilizing soft x-ray resonant magnetic reflectometry we have observed that the antiferromagnetic uncompensated spins are dominantly frozen with nearly no rotating spins due to the chemical intermixing, which correlates to the inferred mechanism for the exchange bias.

4 pages, 3 figures

References in corpus (5)

• Exchange bias effect of ferro-/antiferromagnetic heterostructures
• Training Induced Positive Exchange Bias in NiFe/IrMn Bilayers
• Finite size effect on Neel temperature with Co3O4 nanoparticles
• Quantitative description of the azimuthal dependence of the exchange bias effect
• Soft X-ray Resonant Magnetic Scattering Studies on Fe/CoO Exchange Bias System

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Exchange anisotropy pinning of a standing spin wave mode
• Exchange bias in Fe/Ir20Mn80 bilayers: Role of spin-glass like interface and bulk antiferromagnet spins
• Tunable Enhancement of Magnetization Dynamics by Crystal Cut at Interface Exchange Coupled $\alpha$-Fe${}_2$O${}_3$/NiFe Heterostructures
• Magnetoelastic Coupling and Possibility of Spintronic Electromagnetomechanical Effects