How to obtain a magnetic hard-soft architecture by pulsed laser deposition

摘要

In spin valve type systems, one ferromagnetic electrode must be magnetically hard to act as a reference layer while the other electrode must be magnetically soft to act as a sensor or storage layer. This magnetic hard-soft architecture can usually be obtained by four different methods: the use of two ferromagnets with different coercive fields (here CoFe2 and Ni80Fe20), the use of an underlayer enhancing the coercive field of one of the two ferromagnets (here Ta and Ru), the use of a ferromagnet coupled to a ferrimagnet or antiferromagnet (here NiO/CoFe2 and CoFe2O4/CoFe2), or the use of an artificial antiferromagnet (here CoFe2/Ru/CoFe2). We show that at least the first and the third methods seem to work with pulsed laser deposition in the thermodynamic conditions used.