Ferrimagnetic nanostructures for magnetic memory bits

Abstract

Increasing the magnetic data recording density requires reducing the size of the individual memory elements of a recording layer as well as employing magnetic materials with temperature-dependent functionalities. Therefore, it is predicted that the near future of magnetic data storage technology involves a combination of energy-assisted recording on nanometer-scale magnetic media. We present the potential of heat-assisted magnetic recording on a patterned sample; a ferrimagnetic alloy composed of a rare earth and a transition metal, DyCo${}_5$, which is grown on a hexagonal-ordered nanohole array membrane. The magnetization of the antidot array sample is out-of-plane oriented at room temperature and rotates towards in-plane upon heating above its spin-reorientation temperature (T${}_R$) of ~350 K, just above room temperature. Upon cooling back to room temperature (below T${}_R$), we observe a well-defined and unexpected in-plane magnetic domain configuration modulating with ~45 nm. We discuss the underlying mechanisms giving rise to this behavior by comparing the magnetic properties of the patterned sample with the ones of its extended thin film counterpart. Our results pave the way for novel applications of ferrimagnetic antidot arrays of superior functionality in magnetic nano-devices near room temperature.

19 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (2)

• Bit Patterned Magnetic Recording: Theory, Media Fabrication, and Recording Performance
• The 2014 Magnetism Roadmap

Cited by in corpus (4)

• X-ray magnetic linear dichroism as a probe for non-collinear magnetic state in ferrimagnetic single layer exchange bias systems
• Nonreciprocal dynamics of ferrimagnetic bimerons
• Critical, compensation and hysteresis behaviors studies in the ferrimagnetic Blume-Capel model with mixed half-integer spin-(3/2, 7/2): Exact recursion relations calculations
• Transient grating spectroscopy on a DyCo${}_5$ thin film with femtosecond extreme ultraviolet pulses