HREM study of Co/Cu/Co/MnFe spin valves

Author

Bayle-Guillemaud, Pascale ; Petford-Long, Amanda K. ; Anthony, Thomas C. ; Brug, James A.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Mater., Oxford Univ., UK

Volume

32

Issue

5

fYear

1996

fDate

9/1/1996 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

4627

Lastpage

4629

Abstract

High resolution electron microscopy (HREM) has been used to investigate the structure of Co(6 nm)/Cu(2.8 nm)/Co(4 nm)/MnFe(12 nm) spin valves so as to correlate the structure with the magnetic properties. The presence of a Ti seed layer enhances the structural quality of the film giving a strong ⟨111⟩ texture and large grain size. It is shown that the ⟨111⟩ texture favours a high exchange bias field. A numerical analysis of the HREM micrographs has been carried out in order to investigate more quantitatively the structure of the interfaces. It has been shown that locally they are diffuse over 2 monolayers in the growth direction

Keywords

cobalt; copper; electron microscopy; exchange interactions (electron); giant magnetoresistance; grain size; interface structure; iron alloys; magnetic multilayers; manganese alloys; texture; Co-Cu-Co-MnFe; Co/Cu/Co/MnFe spin valve; HREM micrograph; Ti seed layer; exchange bias field; grain size; high resolution electron microscopy; interface structure; magnetic properties; numerical analysis; texture; Electron microscopy; Giant magnetoresistance; Grain size; Image analysis; Laboratories; Magnetic films; Magnetic materials; Magnetic properties; Spin valves; Substrates;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Magnetics, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0018-9464

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/20.539100

Filename

539100