1. Tunable Spin-Flop Transition in Artificial Ferrimagnets
- Author
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Antropov, N. O., Kravtsov, E. A., Makarova, M. V., Proglyado, V. V., Keller, T., Subbotin, I. A., Pashaev, E. M., Prutskov, G. V., Vasiliev, A. L., Chesnokov, Y. M., Bebenin, N. G., Milyaev, M. A., Ustinov, V. V., Keimer, B., and Khaydukov, Y. N.
- Subjects
ARTIFICIAL FERRIMAGNETS ,ANISOTROPY AXIS ,FERRIMAGNETISM ,ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE ,IRON ALLOYS ,CRITICAL VALUE ,MAGNETIC ANISOTROPY ,MAGNETIC FIELDS ,ANTIFERROMAGNETICS ,TRANSITION FIELDS ,GADOLINIUM ALLOYS ,ANTIFERROMAGNETS ,SPIN-FLOP TRANSITIONS - Abstract
Spin-flop transition (SFT) consists in a jump-like reversal of antiferromagnetic (AF) lattice into a noncollinear state when the magnetic field increases above the critical value. Potentially the SFT can be utilized in many applications of a rapidly developing AF spintronics. However, the difficulty of using them in conventional antiferromagnets lies in (a) too large switching magnetic fields (b) the need for presence of a magnetic anisotropy, and (c) requirement to apply magnetic field along the correspondent anisotropy axis. In this work we propose to use artificial ferrimagnets (FEMs) in which the SFT occurs without anisotropy and the transition field can be lowered by adjusting exchange coupling in the structure. This is proved by experiment on artificial Fe-Gd FEMs where usage of Pd spacers allowed us to suppress the transition field by two orders of magnitude. © 2021 authors. Published by the American Physical Society. Open access publication funded by the Max Planck Society. We thank A. B. Drovosekov, D. I. Kholin, and D. Cortie for fruitful discussion of the results. This work is partially based on experiments performed at the NREX instrument operated by the Max Planck Society at the MLZ, Garching, Germany and supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (Project No. 107745057-TRR80). Research in Ekaterinburg was performed within the state assignment of Minobrnauki of Russia (theme “Spin” No. AAAA-A18-118020290104-2) and was partly supported by Russian Foundation for Basic Research (Project No. 19-02-00674).
- Published
- 2021