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Magnetic relaxation in epitaxial films with in-plane and out-of-plane anisotropies

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Abstract

Nanomagnetic materials are needed for increasing data storage capacity and suited for enhancing the performance of permanent magnets. However, their performance is controlled by magnetic switching, which is driven by a competition between thermal activation energies and anisotropy energies. Here, we elucidate the magnetic switching process in epitaxial films with in-plane and out-of-plane magnetic anisotropies. While in both media the magnetization obeys a logarithmic decay over time, a drastic difference is revealed in their magnetic viscosities. The relaxation logarithmic law is a consequence of the epitaxy itself under which the film growth is initiated through random nucleation followed by islands growth and their coalescence, leading to non-uniform structural domains. These structural domains behave like magnetic domains due to the presence of antiphase boundaries where exchange coupling is disrupted. The activation volume for both media is found to match the average size of the structural domains. The very slow relaxation process under out-of-plane anisotropy is linked to the demagnetizing field, which drastically weakens the irreversible magnetic susceptibility. A simple analytical model was developed and found to well predict and corroborate the experimental findings. This study was conducted on CoFe2O4 films epitaxially grown on (100) and (110) MgO substrates.

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Data availability

The data supporting the findings of the current study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support from the National Science Foundation under research grants NSF DMR 2055432, and DMR 2117180.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, Morgan State University, 1700 E. Cold Spring Lane, Baltimore, MD, 21251, USA

    Abdellah Lisfi & Frank Efe

  2. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, 20742, USA

    Manfred Wuttig

Authors
  1. Abdellah Lisfi
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  2. Frank Efe
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  3. Manfred Wuttig
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Contributions

AL designed and wrote the manuscript. He also synthesized the samples for this study, which consist of CoFe2O4 films epitaxially grown by pulsed laser deposition on (100) and (110) MgO substrates. He performed XRD, relaxation and torque measurements. FE carried out the measurement of hysteresis loops with a vibrating sample magnetometer along the directions parallel and perpendicular to the film plane. MW contributed to the TEM high resolution imaging. He edited the manuscript and provided feedback on the paper.

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Correspondence to Abdellah Lisfi.

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Lisfi, A., Efe, F. & Wuttig, M. Magnetic relaxation in epitaxial films with in-plane and out-of-plane anisotropies. Appl. Phys. A 129, 716 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00339-023-06974-7

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