Magnetic phase transitions in epitaxial Fe/Cr superlattices
- Argonne National Lab., IL (United States). Materials Science Div.
Fe/Cr superlattices exhibit a variety of intriguing magnetic properties not observed in bulk materials. Examples include oscillatory interlayer coupling and giant magnetoresistance. Growth of epitaxial superlattices allows the interlayer coupling and magnetic anisotropy to be tailored to probe rather subtle magnetic ordering transitions of thin-film antiferromagnets. The author discusses two such transitions, the surface spin-flop transition in Fe/Cr(211) superlattices and the Neel transition of thin Cr layers in proximity with Fe in Fe/Cr(001) superlattices. The surface spin-flop transition is a first-order, field-induced phase transition in antiferromagnets with uniaxial magnetic anisotropy and the field applied along the easy direction. In Fe/Cr(100) superlattices, the antiferromagnetic ordering of the Cr spacers results in anomalies in a variety of physical properties. The transition temperature is strongly Cr thickness dependent. A `transition-temperature shift exponent` is extracted from the data in the thick Cr regime (< 160 {angstrom}) and discussed in terms of a combination of finite-size and spin-frustration effects.
- Research Organization:
- Argonne National Lab., IL (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE, Washington, DC (United States)
- DOE Contract Number:
- W-31109-ENG-38
- OSTI ID:
- 95232
- Report Number(s):
- ANL/MSD/CP--86639; CONF-9506224--1; ON: DE95013737
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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