Exchange coupling of a perpendicular ferromagnet to a half-metallic compensated ferrimagnet via a thin hafnium interlayer

Abstract

A thin Hafnium film is shown to act both as an effective diffusion barrier for manganese at a thickness of 0.7 nm, and as an effective exchange coupling layer in a sandwich structure with perpendicular magnetic anisotropy. The magnetic layers are Co${}_{20}$Fe${}_{60}$B${}_{20}$ and the low moment ferrimagnet Mn${}_2$Ru${}_x$Ga (MRG). The coupling changes sign at the compensation temperature of MRG and the exchange energy reaches 0.11 mJm${}^{-2}$ for the thinnest Hf interlayers. Ruthenium, the usual metal of choice for coupling ferromagnetic layers in thin film heterostructures, cannot be used with the zero-moment half metal MRG because of Ru interdiffusion. Due to its large coercivity near compensation, the MRG can act as an effective source of exchange pinning.

References in corpus (8)

• Design of compensated ferrimagnetic Heusler alloys for giant tunable exchange bias
• Enhancement of Perpendicular Magnetic Anisotropy and Transmission of Spin-Hall-Effect-Induced Spin Currents by a Hf Spacer Layer in W/Hf/CoFeB/MgO Layer
• Effect of high annealing temperature on giant tunnel magnetoresistance ratio of CoFeB/MgO/CoFeB magnetic tunnel junctions
• Refrustration and competing orders in the prototypical Dy2Ti2O7 spin ice material
• Designing a fully-compensated half-metallic ferrimagnet
• Laser-induced THz magnetization precession for a tetragonal Heusler-like nearly compensated ferrimagnet
• Structure, site-specific magnetism and magneto-transport properties of epitaxial D0${}_{22}$ Mn${}_2$Fe${}_x$Ga thin films
• Study of the Effect of Annealing on the Properties of Mn2RuxGa Thin Films

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Magneto-optic Kerr effect in a spin-polarized zero-moment ferrimagnet
• Magnetization dynamics of the compensated ferrimagnet $M{n}_{2}R{u}_{x}Ga$
• Epitaxial Heusler Superlattice Co2MnAl/Fe2MnAl with Perpendicular Magnetic Anisotropy and Termination-Dependent Half-Metallicity
• Sub-picosecond exchange-relaxation in the compensated ferrimagnet Mn${}_2$Ru${}_x$Ga
• Study of the Effect of Annealing on the Properties of Mn2RuxGa Thin Films