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- 1996 (3) (remove)
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Structural relaxation and magnetic anisotropies in Co/Cu(001) films
(1996)
- The magnetic anisotropy of Co/Cu~001! films has been investigated by the magneto-optical Kerr effect, both in the pseudomorphic growth regime and above the critical thickness where strain relaxation sets in. A clear correlation between the onset of strain relaxation as measured by means of reflection high-energy electron diffraction and changes of the magnetic anisotropy has been found.
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Magnetic exchange coupling effects in asymmetric trilayer structures of MBE grown Co/Cr/Fe
(1996)
- We present results of anisotropy and exchange-coupling studies of asymmetric Co/Cr/Fe trilayers and superlattices grown by molecular beam epitaxy on Cr~001!/Mg~001! buffers and substrates. The magnetic properties have been investigated using both the longitudinal magneto-optical Kerr effect and ferromagnetic resonance. The hysteresis data obtained from the trilayer system were fit to a theoretical model which contains both bilinear and biquadratic coupling. The effective in-plane anisotropy was found to be of fourfold symmetry with the same easy-axis orientation for both the Fe and Co layers. An analysis of the easy-axis hysteresis loops indicates long-period oscillatory coupling and also suggests a short periodic coupling. We show that weakly antiferromagnetically coupled asymmetric films might serve as potential candidates for improved spin-valve systems.
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Suppression of the magnetocrystalline bulk anisotropy in thin epitaxial Co(110) films on Cu(110)
(1996)
- We report on an unexpected suppression of the magnetocrystalline anisotropy contribution in epitaxial fcc Co(110) films on Cu(110) below a thickness of dc=(50 +/- 10) Å. For film thicknesses larger than dc the measured anisotropy value agrees with published data. Measurements on films with reduced strain indicate a large strain dependence of dc . A model calculation based on a crystal-field formalism and discussed within the context of band theory, which explicitly takes tetragonal misfit strains into account, reproduces the experimen-tally observed anomalies. Our results indicate that the usually applied phenomenological description of anisotropies, assuming additive free energy terms for each anisotropy contribution, fails in this case.
