Out-of-plane exchange coupling between epitaxial Ni(50 Å) and NiO(600 Å) bilayers

Authors

Z.Y. Liu, University of Nebraska - Lincoln
Shireen Adenwalla, University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow

Date of this Version

February 2003

Comments

Published by American Institute of Physics. J. Applied Physics 93, 2091 (2003). ©2003 American Institute of Physics. Permission to use. http://jap.aip.org/jap/.

Abstract

We have investigated the exchange coupling between an epitaxial Ni (50 Å) film with an out-of-plane magnetic easy axis and a NiO (600 Å) film by polar magneto-optic Kerr-effect measurements. The temperature dependences of exchange field H_E for both as-deposited and field-cooled states exhibit the same blocking temperature T_B~130 °C. The exchange field H_E for the field-cooled state is lower than that for the as-deposited state. The hard-axis in-plane loop shows a much smaller value of H_E. No coercivity enhancement is observed. The data are suggestive of linear coupling across the ferromagnet/antiferromagnet interface.