CRITICAL THICKNESS AND PERPENDICULAR ANISOTROPY OF EVAPORATED PERMALLOY FILMS WITH STRIPE DOMAINS

Abstract

We report that the critical thickness for the appearance of stripe domains in evaporated permalloy films depends sensitively on vacuum pressure during evaporation and also that the perpendicular anisotropy constant can be obtained from the critical thickness rather precisely. It was found that the perpendicular anisotropy increases with increasing pressures and at high pressures the contribution of the magnetostriction effect to the anisotropy can be neglected.