Ion Irradiation Induced Cobalt/Cobalt Oxide Heterostructures: From Materials to Devices

The demand on high data transfer and storage capacities requires smaller devices to transmit or save data. Forming well-defined ferromagnetic and electrically conducting volumes in a non-magnetic and insulating matrix in nanometer dimensions can pave a way to the production of such small devices. Oxygen reduction in Co3O4/Pd multilayers is possible by local proton irradiation resulting in ferromagnetic and conducting Co embedded in a nonmagnetic and insulating Co3O4 matrix [1].
To understand the mechanism behind this, we analysed in-plane single- and out-of-plane multilayer cobalt oxide films after H+ irradiation. We also confined irradiated areas on films in the range of microns to sub-micron to ascertain the lateral distribution of displaced oxygen, while establishing vertical Co/CoO interfaces which would lead to exchange bias across said interfaces.
Irradiated films were characterized by SQUID magnetometry to estimate the effective O removal. Figure 1 (a) shows hysteresis loops for single layers irradiated with various doses and (b) multilayer systems irradiated with a fixed dose. In (a) we see that irradiating single layer films results in minimal O removal by measuring the saturation magnetization Ms. Geometrical confinement of the irradiated region indeed increases the Ms suggesting lateral O displacement, although this value is still only about 10% of bulk Co metal ((a) inset). The effect is much more pronounced in 0.8 nm CoO multilayers as indicated by the presence of perpendicular magnetic anisotropy (b).
Figure 2 shows a loop shift for the multilayer (green) after field cooling demonstrating the formation of vertical Co/CoO interfaces post irradiation. This result is not seen in a single layer system (orange) as the layer is too thick to maintain a well-defined interface. These findings present new opportunities of device fabrication in single and bilayer systems.