No Arabic abstract
We present a systematic study of the magnetic proximity effect in Pt, depending on the magnetic moment and anisotropy of adjacent metallic ferromagnets. Element-selective x-ray resonant magnetic reflectivity measurements at the Pt absorption edge (11565$,$eV) are carried out to investigate the spin polarization of Pt in Pt/Co$_textrm{1-x}$Fe$_textrm{x}$ bilayers. We observe the largest magnetic moment of (0.72$,pm,$0.03)$, mu_textrm{B}$ per spin polarized Pt atom in Pt/Co$_textrm{33}$Fe$_textrm{67}$, following the Slater-Pauling curve of magnetic moments in Co-Fe alloys. In general, a clear linear dependence is observed between the Pt moment and the moment of the adjacent ferromagnet. Further, we study the magnetic anisotropy of the magnetized Pt which clearly adopts the magnetic anisotropy of the ferromagnet below. This is depicted for Pt on Fe(001) and on Co$_textrm{50}$Fe$_textrm{50}$(001), which have a 45$^{circ}$ relative rotation of the fourfold magnetocrystalline anisotropy.
We fabricated NiFe$_textrm{2}$O$_textrm{x}$ thin films on MgAl$_2$O$_4$(001) substrates by reactive dc magnetron co-sputtering varying the oxygen partial pressure during deposition. The fabrication of a variable material with oxygen deficiency leads to controllable electrical and optical properties which would be beneficial for the investigations of the transport phenomena and would, therefore, promote the use of such materials in spintronic and spin caloritronic applications. We used several characterization techniques in order to investigate the film properties, focusing on their structural, magnetic, electrical, and optical properties. From the electrical resistivity measurements we obtained the conduction mechanisms that govern the systems in high and low temperature regimes, extracting low thermal activation energies which unveil extrinsic transport mechanisms. The thermal activation energy decreases in the less oxidized samples revealing the pronounced contribution of a large amount of electronic states localized in the band gap to the electrical conductivity. Hall effect measurements showed the mixed-type semiconducting character of our films. The optical band gaps were determined via ultraviolet-visible spectroscopy. They follow a similar trend as the thermal activation energy, with lower band gap values in the less oxidized samples.
In this work we report the appearence of a large perpendicular magnetic anisotropy (PMA) in Fe$_{1-x}$Ga$_x$ thin films grown onto ZnSe/GaAs(100). This arising anisotropy is related to the tetragonal metastable phase in as-grown samples recently reported [M. Eddrief {it et al.}, Phys. Rev. B {bf 84}, 161410 (2011)]. By means of ferromagnetic resonance studies we measured PMA values up to $sim$ 5$times$10$^5$ J/m$^3$. PMA vanishes when the cubic structure is recovered upon annealing at 300$^{circ}$C. Despite the important values of the magnetoelastic constants measured via the cantilever method, the consequent magnetoelastic contribution to PMA is not enough to explain the observed anisotropy values in the distorted state. {it Ab initio} calculations show that the chemical ordering plays a crucial role in the appearance of PMA. Through a phenomenological model we are able to explain that an excess of next nearest neighbour Ga pairs (B$_2$-like ordering) along the perpendicular direction arises as the source of PMA in Fe$_{1-x}$Ga$_x$ thin films.
We present x-ray resonant magnetic reflectivity (XRMR) as a very sensitive tool to detect proximity induced interface spin polarization in Pt/Fe, Pt/Ni$_{33}$Fe$_{67}$, Pt/Ni$_{81}$Fe$_{19}$ (permalloy), and Pt/Ni bilayers. We demonstrate that a detailed analysis of the reflected x-ray intensity gives insight in the spatial distribution of the spin polarization of a non-magnetic metal across the interface to a ferromagnetic layer. The evaluation of the experimental results with simulations based on optical data from ab initio calculations provides the induced magnetic moment per Pt atom in the spin polarized volume adjacent to the ferromagnet. We find the largest spin polarization in Pt/Fe and a much smaller magnetic proximity effect in Pt/Ni. Additional XRMR experiments with varying photon energy are in good agreement with the theoretical predictions for the energy dependence of the magnetooptic parameters and allow identifying the optical dispersion $delta$ and absorption $beta$ across the Pt L3-absorption edge.
The strong perpendicular magnetic anisotropy of $L{rm1_0}$-ordered FePt has been the subject of extensive studies for a long time. However, it is not known which element, Fe or Pt, mainly contributes to the magnetic anisotropy energy (MAE). We have investigated the anisotropy of the orbital magnetic moments of Fe 3$d$ and Pt 5$d$ electrons in $L{rm1_0}$-ordered FePt thin films by Fe and Pt $L_{2,3}$-edge x-ray magnetic circular dichroism (XMCD) measurements for samples with various degrees of long-range chemical order $S$. Fe $L_{2,3}$-edge XMCD showed that the orbital magnetic moment was larger when the magnetic field was applied perpendicular to the film than parallel to it, and that the anisotropy of the orbital magnetic moment increased with $S$. Pt $L_{2,3}$-edge XMCD also showed that the orbital magnetic moment was smaller when the magnetic field was applied perpendicular to the film than parallel to it, opposite to the Fe $L_{2,3}$-edge XMCD results although the anisotropy of the orbital magnetic moment increases with $S$ like the Fe edge. These results are qualitatively consistent with the first-principles calculation by Solovyev ${it et al.}$ [Phys. Rev. B $bf{52}$, 13419 (1995).], which also predicts the dominant contributions of Pt 5$d$ to the magnetic anisotropy energy rather than Fe 3$d$ due to the strong spin-orbit coupling and the small spin splitting of the Pt 5$d$ bands in $L{rm1_0}$-ordered FePt.
X-ray absorption spectroscopy was used to determine the valence state in La$_2$Co$_{1-x}$Mn$_{1+x}$O$_6$ ($xapprox 0.23$) thin films. We found that in spite of the non-stoichiometry, Co is in a divalent state while Mn ions show a mixed valence state. The relation of this finding with the magnetic properties of the films is discussed. X-ray magnetic circular dichroism measurements prove that magnetic anisotropy originates from Co spin-orbit coupling and it is strain-dependent: a strong increase of the angular contribution to the magnetic moment is found when in-plane (out-of-plane) and cell parameters get expanded (compressed). This behavior is reproduced by first order perturbation theory calculations.