Correlation between spin structure oscillations and domain wall velocities

Magnetic sensing and logic devices based on the motion of magnetic domain walls rely on the precise and deterministic control of the position and the velocity of individual magnetic domain walls in curved nanowires. Varying domain wall velocities have been predicted to result from intrinsic effects such as oscillating domain wall spin structure transformations and extrinsic pinning due to imperfections. Here we use direct dynamic imaging of the nanoscale spin structure that allows us for the first time to directly check these predictions. We find a new regime of oscillating domain wall motion even below the Walker breakdown correlated with periodic spin structure changes. We show that the e…

Correlation between spin structure oscillations and domain wall velocities (presentation video)

Magnetic sensing and logic devices based on the motion of magnetic domain walls rely on the precise and deterministic control of the position and the velocity of individual magnetic domain walls. Varying domain wall velocities have been predicted to result from intrinsic effects such as oscillating domain wall spin structure transformations and extrinsic pinning due to imperfections. We use direct dynamic imaging of the nanoscale spin structure to directly check these predictions. We find a new regime of oscillating domain wall motion even below the Walker breakdown correlated with periodic spin structure changes and we show that the extrinsic pinning from defects in the nanowire only affec…

Scaling of intrinsic domain wall magneto-resistance with confinement in electromigrated nanocontacts

In this work we study the evolution of intrinsic domain wall magnetoresistance (DWMR) with domain wall confinement. Clean permalloy notched half-ring nanocontacts are fabricated using a special ultra-high vacuum electromigration procedure to tailor the size of the wire in-situ and through the resulting domain wall confinement we tailor the domain wall width from a few tens of nm down to a few nm. Through measurements of the dependence of the resistance with respect to the applied field direction we extract the contribution of a single domain wall to the MR of the device, as a function of the domain wall width in the confining potential at the notch. In this size range, an intrinsic positive…

Domain wall transformations and hopping in La0.7Sr0.3MnO3nanostructures imaged with high resolution x-ray magnetic microscopy

We investigate the effect of electric current pulse injection on domain walls in La(0.7)Sr(0.3)MnO(3) (LSMO) half-ring nanostructures by high resolution x-ray magnetic microscopy at room temperature. Due to the easily accessible Curie temperature of LSMO, we can employ reasonable current densities to induce the Joule heating necessary to observe effects such as hopping of the domain walls between different pinning sites and nucleation/annihilation events. Such effects are the dominant features close to the Curie temperature, while spin torque is found to play a small role close to room temperature. We are also able to observe thermally activated domain wall transformations and we find that,…

Switching by Domain-Wall Automotion in Asymmetric Ferromagnetic Rings

A ring-shaped magnetic logic device offers two vortex states (clockwise and counterclockwise) to encode bits, with relative stability against external magnetic fields. The dynamics of magnetization switching in such structures, though, still need unraveling. The authors present direct experimental visualization of reproducible, robust switching in magnetic rings via domain-wall automotion, which does not require an applied field. Simulations reveal that annihilation of domain walls through automotion always occurs, with the detailed topology of the walls only influencing the dynamics locally, in line with the experimental results.

Time-resolved imaging of pulse-induced magnetization reversal with a microwave assist field

AbstractThe reversal of the magnetization under the influence of a field pulse has been previously predicted to be an incoherent process with several competing phenomena such as domain wall relaxation, spin wave-mediated instability regions and vortex-core mediated reversal dynamics. However, there has been no study on the direct observation of the switching process with the aid of a microwave signal input. We report a time-resolved imaging study of magnetization reversal in patterned magnetic structures under the influence of a field pulse with microwave assistance. The microwave frequency is varied to demonstrate the effect of resonant microwave-assisted switching. We observe that the swi…

Domain wall pinning in ultra-narrow electromigrated break junctions

The study of magnetic domain walls in constrained geometries is an important topic, yet when dealing with extreme nanoscale magnetic systems artefacts can often dominate the measurements and obscure the effects of intrinsic magnetic origin. In this work we study the evolution of domain wall depinning in electromigrated ferromagnetic junctions which are both initially fabricated and subsequently tailored in-situ in clean ultra-high vacuum conditions. Carefully designed Ni(80)Fe(20) (Permalloy) notched half-ring structures are fabricated and investigated as a function of constriction width by tailoring the size of the contact using controlled in-situ electromigration. It is found that the dom…

Synchronous precessional motion of multiple domain in a ferromagnetic nanowire by perpendicular field pulses

Magnetic storage and logic devices based on magnetic domain wall motion rely on the precise and synchronous displacement of multiple domain walls. The conventional approach using magnetic fields does not allow for the synchronous motion of multiple domains. As an alternative method, synchronous current-induced domain wall motion was studied, but the required high-current densities prevent widespread use in devices. Here we demonstrate a radically different approach: we use out-of-plane magnetic field pulses to move in-plane domains, thus combining field-induced magnetization dynamics with the ability to move neighbouring domain walls in the same direction. Micromagnetic simulations suggest …

The effect of magnetocrystalline anisotropy on the domain structure of patterned Fe2CrSi Heusler alloy thin films

The effects of magnetic anisotropy on domain structures in half-metallic Heusler alloy Fe2CrSi thin film elements were investigated using high resolution x-ray magnetic circular dichroism photoemission electron microscopy. The transition of the dominating contribution from the magnetocrystalline anisotropy to the shape anisotropy is observed in square-shaped elements when reducing the size below 2.0–2.5 μm. In particular, we identify in disk-shaped Heusler elements the vortex state as the ground state. The shape-anisotropy dominated, well-defined magnetization configuration shows the potential of the Fe2CrSi Heusler alloy for applications in vortex-core- or domain-wall-devices, where the hi…

Dynamic domain wall chirality rectification by rotating magnetic fields

Local Domain-Wall Velocity Engineering via Tailored Potential Landscapes in Ferromagnetic Rings

One vein of spintronics research seeks to harness propagating magnetic domain walls for information processing. The authors engineer a potential landscape via local variations in a ring geometry, and image the motion of domain walls in rotating magnetic fields to quantify the contribution of the spatially varying potential to wall dynamics. Domain-wall velocity depends on ring width, being highest where the ring is widest, and such a potential thus could be selected to synchronize velocities and enable applications.

Strain-induced Shape Anisotropy in Antiferromagnetic Structures

We demonstrate how shape dependent strain can be used to control antiferromagnetic order in NiO Pt thin films. For rectangular elements patterned along the easy and hard magnetocrystalline anisotropy axes of our film, we observe different domain structures and we identify magnetoelastic interactions that are distinct for different domain configurations. We reproduce the experimental observations by modeling the magnetoelastic interactions, considering spontaneous strain induced by the domain configuration, as well as elastic strain due to the substrate and the shape of the patterns. This allows us to demonstrate and explain how the variation of the aspect ratio of rectangular elements can b…

Localized domain wall nucleation dynamics in asymmetric ferromagnetic rings revealed by direct time-resolved magnetic imaging

We report time-resolved observations of field-induced domain wall nucleation in asymmetric ferromagnetic rings using single direction field pulses and rotating fields. We show that the asymmetric geometry of a ring allows for controlling the position of nucleation events, when a domain wall is nucleated by a rotating magnetic field. Direct observation by scanning transmission x-ray microscopy (STXM) reveals that the nucleation of domain walls occurs through the creation of transient ripplelike structures. This magnetization state is found to exhibit a surprisingly high reproducibility even at room temperature and we determine the combinations of field strengths and field directions that all…

ELECTRICAL-FIELD CONTROL OF MAGNETISM MEDIATED BY STRAIN IN Ni NANOSTRUCTURES FABRICATED ON PRE-POLED PMN–PT (011)

We investigate the effects of piezoelectric-generated strain on the magnetization configuration of Ni nanostructures fabricated on pre-poled piezoelectric (011) [ Pb ( Mg 0.33 Nb 0.66) O 3]0.68–[ PbTiO 3]0.32 (PMN–PT) by high resolution X-ray microscopy. We observe a strong uniaxial anisotropy in the Ni nanostructures, due to the relaxation of the substrate following the deposition of the Ni . The anisotropy can be modified by the application of an electric field to the piezoelectric substrate (thus generating a piezoelectric strain in the system) through the magneto-elastic effect. By applying an electric field to the PMN–PT, the magnetization configuration in nanostructured Ni squares an…

Dynamic domain wall chirality rectification by rotating magnetic fields

We report on the observation of magnetic vortex domain wall chirality reversal in ferromagnetic rings that is controlled by the sense of rotation of a magnetic field. We use time-resolved X-ray microscopy to dynamically image the chirality-switching process and perform micromagnetic simulations to deduce the switching details from time-resolved snapshots. We find experimentally that the switching occurs within less than 4 ns and is observed in all samples with ring widths ranging from 0.5 μm to 2 μm, ring diameters between 2 μm and 5 μm, and a thickness of 30 nm, where a vortex domain wall is present in the magnetic onion state of the ring. From the magnetic contrast in the time-resolved im…

Data for the article "Strain-induced shape anisotropy in antiferromagnetic structures"

Data for the article "Strain-induced shape anisotropy in antiferromagnetic structures" URL: https://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevB.106.094430 DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevB.106.094430