Interface Role in CoFe/IrMn Exchange Biased Systems

The authors study the effect of the interface on the coercivity H_c and the exchange field H_ex in CoFe/IrMn systems by comparing the contribution of the interfacial area and the ferromagnetic layer thickness. It is shown that the exchange field only depends on the intrinsic coupling at the interface and thermal effects. By increasing activation temperature T_ACT, the amount of antiferromagnetic material that undergoes reversal during the conditioning time increases. This way shifts the hysteresis loop reproducibly by increasing T_ACT.