Correlation between Exchange Bias and Pinned Interfacial Spins

H. Ohldag, A. Scholl, F. Nolting, E. Arenholz, S. Maat, A. T. Young, M. Carey, and J. Stöhr

Phys. Rev. Lett. 91, 017203 – Published 1 July 2003

Abstract

Using x-ray magnetic circular dichroism, we have detected the very interfacial spins that are responsible for the horizontal loop shift in three different exchange bias sandwiches, chosen because of their potential for device applications. The “pinned” uncompensated interfacial spins constitute only a fraction of a monolayer and do not rotate in an external magnetic field since they are tightly locked to the antiferromagnetic lattice. A simple extension of the Meiklejohn and Bean model is proposed to account quantitatively for the exchange bias fields in the three studied systems from the experimentally determined number of pinned moments and their sizes.

Received 19 October 2002

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.91.017203

Authors & Affiliations

H. Ohldag^1,2,3,*, A. Scholl², F. Nolting⁴, E. Arenholz², S. Maat⁵, A. T. Young², M. Carey⁵, and J. Stöhr¹

¹Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory, P.O. Box 20450, Stanford, California 94309, USA
²Advanced Light Source, One Cyclotron Road, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California 94720, USA
³Institut für Angewandte Physik, Universität Düsseldorf, 40225 Düsseldorf, Germany
⁴Swiss Light Source, Paul Scherrer Institut, CH-5232 Villigen PSI, Switzerland
⁵Hitachi Global Storage Technologies, San Jose Research Center, 650 Harry Road, San Jose, California 95120, USA

^*Author to whom correspondence should be addressed. Electronic address: hohldag@stanford.edu

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Vol. 91, Iss. 1 — 4 July 2003

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