Temperature-controlled interlayer exchange coupling in strong/weak ferromagnetic multilayers: A thermomagnetic Curie switch

Abstract

We investigate interlayer exchange coupling based on driving a strong/weak/strong ferromagnetic trilayer through the Curie point of the weakly ferromagnetic spacer, with exchange coupling between the strongly ferromagnetic outer layers that can be switched on and off, or varied continuously in magnitude by controlling the temperature of the material. We use Ni-Cu alloys of varied composition as the spacer material and model the effects of proximity-induced magnetism and the interlayer exchange coupling through the spacer from first principles, taking into account not only thermal spin disorder but also the dependence of the atomic moment of Ni on the nearest-neighbor concentration of the nonmagnetic Cu. We propose and demonstrate a gradient-composition spacer, with a lower Ni concentration at the interfaces, for greatly improved effective-exchange uniformity and significantly improved thermomagnetic switching in the structure. The reported multilayer materials can form the base for a variety of magnetic devices, such as sensors, oscillators, and memory elements based on thermomagnetic Curie switching.