Date of Award

2011

Document Type

Honors Thesis

Department

Physics

First Advisor

Clark Rowland

Second Advisor

Roland Kawakami

Abstract

We investigate the bilinear and biquadratic interlayer exchange coupling in Co/Fe/MgO/Fe(001). Samples are grown through molecular beam epitaxy and the interlayer exchange coupling is measured through magneto-optic Kerr effect along wedge samples. By varying the location of Fe impurities between the interface and middle of the MgO spacer, we find that the couplings are enhanced and are dependent on the location of the impurities. We found that the interfacial impurities created a larger impact across all thickness on the bilinear coupling than no impurities or impurities in the middle of the MgO. The biquadratic coupling didn't have a clear trend.

Subject Area

Magnetic couplings, Molecular beam epitaxy, Magnetooptics., Kerr effect

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.

DOI

https://dx.doi.org/10.32597/honors/9/

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