The influence of interface roughness on the magnetic properties of exchange biased CoO/Fe thin films

Abstract

We have investigated the correlation between magnetic and structural properties in exchange coupled polycrystalline CoO/Fe thin films. It has been found that an increase in interface roughness increases the exchange bias field as well as the coercivity. The magnetization reversal mechanism is also influenced by the interfacial morphology. Smooth interfaces are characterized by an asymmetric hysteresis loop, which is associated with domain wall motion for the first magnetization reversal after field cooling and spin rotation in all subsequent reversals. This asymmetry diminishes as the interface roughness increases, i.e., all magnetization reversals are dominated by spin rotation. Moreover, we have observed that the blocking temperature decreases with increasing interface roughness. We also report on a logarithmic time dependence of the magnetization which is different for both branches of the hysteresis loop of smooth CoO/Fe bilayers.