X-ray lithography patterning of magnetic material and their characterization

Patterned arrays of magnetic wires, dots and anti-dots have attracted a lot of interest both for their potential applications in magnetic data-storage devices and for the investigation of magnetic phenomena in low-dimensional systems. However the employment of micro- and nano-structures in magnetic high density recording media and non-volatile RAM is not trivial: compared to the case of a continuous film, the small size of the islands increases the effects of the demagnetizing field, affecting the static and dynamic magnetic properties. Moreover, some new effects arise due to the lateral confinement of the structures, e.g.: quantized spin-wave modes. These latter effects are of great interest also from a fundamental point of view.