Field driven ferromagnetic phase nucleation and propagation in antiferromagnetically coupled multilayer films with perpendicular anisotropy

2008 
We investigate the reversal process in {[Co∕Pt]X−1Co∕Ru}×16∕[Co∕Pt]X multilayer films by magnetometry and magnetic transmission x-ray microscopy. After demagnetization, a stable one-dimensional ferromagnetic (FM) stripe domain phase (tiger-tail phase) for a thick sample (X=7) is imaged, while metastable sharp antiferromagnetic domain walls are observed in the remanent state for a thinner stack sample (X=6). When applying an external magnetic field the sharp domain walls of the thinner sample gradually transform into the FM phase via separate nucleation of many isolated FM domains all along the domain boundary. We present energy calculations that reveal the underlying energetics driving the overall reversal mechanism.
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