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Study of exchange coupling in the NiFe / FeMn system and effects of ion irradiation

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Author(s):
Angela Dayana Barra Barrera
Total Authors: 1
Document type: Doctoral Thesis
Press: São Paulo.
Institution: Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Instituto de Física (IF/SBI)
Defense date:
Examining board members:
Antonio Domingues dos Santos; Marcia Carvalho de Abreu Fantini; Flavio Garcia; Luiz Carlos Sampaio Lima; Frank Patrick Missell
Advisor: Antonio Domingues dos Santos
Abstract

The aim of the present work was to produce and to study magnetic and structural properties of Ni81Fe19/Fe50Mn50 thin films. These films were produced by DC magnetron sputtering. We began our study on Si/buffer/Ni81Fe19(30nm)/Fe50Mn50(15nm)/Ta(5nm) films, using Si(100) or Si(111) substrates and Cu or Ta buffer layer, in order to determine the best conditions for obtaining a good exchange coupling between magnetic bilayers. After that, we studied the magnetic properties of these films relative to magnetics layers thickness. The samples studied were Si(100)/Cu (20mn)/Ni81Fe19 (tFM mn)/Fe50Mn50 (tAFM nm)/Ta(3nm), with tFM varying between 5 to 53run, with fixed tAFM of 10mn, and vice versa, namely with fixed tFM and varying tAFM. Finally, we studied the effect of He and Ne ionic irradiation on the exchange-coupling interaction. The thin films were characterized by vibrating sample magnetometry, X-ray diffraction, X-ray reflectometry, X-ray absorption spectroscopy at the Mn K edge, and near field optical microscopy (SNOM). The magnetic characterization of all Si/buffer/NiFe/FeMn/Ta films shows that pristine films present exchange coupling. However, the exchange-coupling interaction needs to be inducing through field cooling procedure for Si/buffer/FeMn/NiFe/Ta films. X ray diffraction measurements show that these films presents FCC crystal structure, plus (111) and (200) crystal textures when the magnetic layers are deposited on Cu buffer layer, and only the (111) crystal texture when the layers are deposited on Ta. On other hand, the magnetic measurement point out that the Cu buffer samples presents the best magnetic properties with high values for Hexc and low values of coercive field. The EXAFS analysis of films with different buffers points out that samples deposited on Ta and directly on silicon present a larger local disorder than samples deposited on Cu. The magnetic measurements of the ionic irradiated films showed an increase of Hexc values for samples irradiated at room temperature with different He rates, compared with the same samples before irradiation. On the other hand, for Ne irradiated samples the exchange field decreased drastically. We observed irradiation no changes on the exchange field values from near field optical microscopy (SNOM) measurements at different areas of samples before and after ionic. These results point out that, even if we are characterizing very small areas of the samples, the exchange field represents the average behavior of the exchange interaction in these areas. (AU)