Chirality switching of an antiferromagnetic spiral wall and its effect on magnetic anisotropy

Li, Q.; Yang, M.; N'Diaye, A. T.; Klewe, C.; Shafer, P.; Gao, N.; Wang, T. Y.; Arenholz, E.; Zhang, Xixiang; Hwang, C.; Li, J.; Qiu, Z. Q.

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2019-11-26

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Abstract

An antiferromagnetic NiO spiral wall in Fe/NiO/Co0.5Ni0.5O/vicinal Ag(001) was created by rotating Fe magnetization and investigated using x-ray magnetic linear dichroism (XMLD). Different from the Mauri's 180° spiral wall, we find that the NiO spiral wall always switches its chirality at ~ 90° rotation of the Fe magnetization, and unwinds the spiral wall back to a single domain with a further rotation of the Fe magnetization from 90° to 180°. The effect of this chirality switching on the magnetic anisotropy was studied using rotational magneto-optic Kerr effect (ROTMOKE) on Py/NiO/Co0.5Ni0.5O/vicinal Ag(001). We find that the original Mauri's model has to be corrected by an energy folding due to the chirality switching, which consequently converts the exchange bias from the Mauri's 180° spiral wall into a uniaxial anisotropy and a negative fourfold anisotropy.

Citation

Li, Q., Yang, M., N’Diaye, A. T., Klewe, C., Shafer, P., Gao, N., … Qiu, Z. Q. (2019). Chirality switching of an antiferromagnetic spiral wall and its effect on magnetic anisotropy. Physical Review Materials, 3(11). doi:10.1103/physrevmaterials.3.114415

Sponsors

This work is supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Materials Sciences and Engineering Division under Contract No. DE-AC02-05CH11231 (van der Waals heterostructures program, KCWF16), National Science Foundation Grant No. DMR-1504568, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Office of Sponsored Research (OSR) and under the Award No. OSR-2016-CRG5-2977, Future Materials Discovery Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (No. 2015M3D1A1070467), Science Research Center Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (No. 2015R1A5A1009962), National Key Research and Development Program of China (No. 2016YFA0300804 and No. 2017YFA0303303). The operations of the Advanced Light Source at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory are supported by the Director, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, and U.S. Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-AC02–05CH11231.