Engineered superlattices with crossover from decoupled to synthetic ferromagnetic behavior

© 2017 IOP Publishing Ltd. The extent of interfacial charge transfer and the resulting impact on magnetic interactions were investigated as a function of sublayer thickness in La 0.7 Sr 0.3 MnO 3 /La 0.7 Sr 0.3 CoO 3 ferromagnetic superlattices. Element-specific soft x-ray magnetic spectroscopy reveals that the electronic structure is altered within 5-6 unit cells of the chemical interface, and can lead to a synthetic ferromagnet with strong magnetic coupling between the sublayers. The saturation magnetization and coercivity depends sensitively on the sublayer thickness due to the length scale of this interfacial effect. For larger sublayer thicknesses, the La 0.7 Sr 0.3 MnO 3 and La 0.7 Sr 0.3 CoO 3 sublayers are magnetically decoupled, displaying two independent magnetic transitions with little sublayer thickness dependence. These results demonstrate how interfacial phenomena at perovskite oxide interfaces can be used to tailor their functional properties at the atomic scale.