Effect of laser annealing on the magnetic properties of Co/Pt based multilayers

Two modes of laser annealing, namely, Continuous Wave (CW) and Pulsed Wave (PW) mode, are used for modifying the magnetic properties of perpendicular magnetic anisotropy (PMA) multilayers in a controlled manner. For this we compare two types of samples - a PMA (Co/Pt)₁₀ multilayer and an antiferromagnetically interlayer exchange coupled PMA (Co/Pt)₄/Co/Ir/(Co/Pt)₅ multilayer. Room temperature hysteresis loops using polar MOKE magnetometry are measured for the different laser annealing modes. Thus, a relationship between the applied laser parameters and the magnetic properties is extracted, which provides an opportunity to alter magnetic properties of PMA multilayer systems locally with high spatial resolution on demand.