Switching mechanism in Co based amorphous wire

Abstract

To get a deeper insight into the mechanism involved in the flux reversal of Co based wire we have tickled the wire with an ac field of smaller amplitude than the switching field, H*, and observed the signal induced in a pancake coil moved along the wire, vibrated a small coil along the wire and observed the induced signal, and taken the temperature dependence of normalized saturation magnetization, Ms, and H*. No signal was observed in the pancake coil in the tickling experiment. A signal that has peak values close to the wire ends, but practically zero in the central region, was observed in the vibrating coil. The variations of Ms and H* with temperature only show a correlation. The results of the above experiments suggest that for Co based wire the most reasonable mechanism for the flux switching is nucleation of a free wall other than the depinning of residual reverse domains at the wire ends.