| AVS 55th International Symposium & Exhibition | |
| Magnetic Interfaces and Nanostructures | Wednesday Sessions |
| Session MI+NC-WeM |
| Session: | Magnetic Thin Films, Nanoparticles and Nanostructures |
| Presenter: | M.J. Walock, The University of Alabama |
| Authors: | M.J. Walock, The University of Alabama H. Ambaye, Oak Ridge National Laboratory G.J. Mankey, The University of Alabama |
| Correspondent: | Click to Email |
Residing at the peak position on the Slater-Pauling curve, FeCo alloys are heavily used in the magnetic recording industry. However, higher magnetizations are desirable. Prior results have shown that alloying FeCo with minute amounts of 4d elements have produced materials with higher magnetizations. Another approach is the deposition of 4d elements as thin spacer layers between FeCo layers. With this tactic, we investigate the interfacial interactions between the 3d alloy and 4d elements. Among the 4d elements, Pd and Ru offer intriguing possibilities. Ru layers permit both ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic exchange interactions, but Pd layers show only ferromagnetic coupling between the magnetic layers. A series of multilayer samples with Pd and Ru spacer layers was studied to explore these interactions. Polarized neutron reflectivity enabled the determination of the layer-specific magnetization vector distributions. The neutron experiments show that there is a small but finite magnetization of the 4d spacer layers, dependent on the distance from the interface. To confirm this observation, x-ray magnetic circular dichroism was used to probe the element-specific average atomic magnetic moments in both the 3d and 4d layers.