Magnetic characterization of curved thin [Co/Pd]-multilayers and Py films

In the last decades thin film technology has led to a vast increase in the variety of fabricated magnetic nano- and microstructures with desired shape, size and properties. Usually flat substrates are used to grow structures. Recently, a study on magnetic thin films with perpendicular anisotropy on curved substrates, for instance on silica spheres [1], has shown that the film curvature enormously influences the magnetic properties. In contrast to structures on flat substrates those so-called magnetic caps exhibit a spatial change of the magnetic easy axis and a film thickness variation across the cap. These features extend the possibilities in tailoring the magnetic specifications such as the magnetic anisotropy [2,3] and coercivity [1,4] or magnetization reversal process [1,2,5]. This complex structure geometry, however, leads to difficulties in characterizing the magnetic properties of the caps using standard techniques: In the case of micrometer-sized structures magnetic imaging methods suffer, for example, from beam deflection or the huge structure height due to the surface curvature.
We will present our results on 4.5µm and 0.33µm sized magnetic caps consisting of [Co(0.28nm)/Pd(0.9nm)]x8-multilayers with perpendicular magnetic anisotropy. First, we concentrate on the interior materials’ properties by studying the magnetic switching process of the cap in external fields and the spin dynamics. Second, the stray field is investigated, which determines the cap’s interaction with the environment.
The magnetization reversal in micron-sized caps has been studied by both, superconducting quantum interference device and magnetic force microscopy, for two distinct directions of an externally applied magnetic field: normal and parallel to the substrate surface. We observe clear deviations from curves measured for the flat film: The caps also show a hysteretic behavior with a very small coercivity of 150Oe in the field parallel to the substrate surface. In the normal field there is no abrupt switching as known from the flat film, but a continuous, two-step like reversal. The origin of the switching features is investigated with in-field and remanent MFM. We will present the magnetic reversal as a multi-step process across the different regions of the cap. In the parallel field two different nucleation processes during the magnetization switching have been observed: a ring nucleation, which is also mentioned in [2], and isolated domain nucleation.
The dynamic properties of the [Co/Pd]-caps have been investigated with ferromagnetic resonance. Due to the small particle size the use of conventional FMR setups does not allow single particle detection. Therefore we prepared micron sized resonators using electron beam lithography [6]. The angular dependence of the FMR modes is investigated. The results are compared with FMR measurements on geometrically similar permalloy caps with in-plane magnetic anisotropy.
The curvature-induced spatial modulation of the magnetic anisotropy further leads to a complicated stray field around the cap. So far, micromagnetic simulations [2] have been carried out to calculate the spin distribution giving rise to the stray field. Here we experimentally visualize the magnetic stray field of 0.33 µm particles by off-axis electron holography (figure 2, left). This technique provides access to the projected in-plane component of the magnetic induction by reconstructing the phase shift of the electron wave when passing through the magnetic stray field of the sample [7]. The projected stray field can be obtained by the gradual rotation of the cap. In contrast to standard measurements on flat samples, for magnetic caps the interpretation of the electron holograms is not straightforward since the stray field is not constant along the electron path. Therefore, we compare the experimentally obtained results with the outcome of micromagnetic simulations performed with the finite element based simulation software SpinFlow 3D (figure 2, right). The qualitative agreement proves the reliability of the simulation.