Simultaneous achievement of high perpendicular exchange bias and low coercivity by controlling ferromagnetic/antiferromagnetic interfacial magnetic anisotropy

Abstract

This study investigates the influence of Pt and Au spacer layers on the perpendicular exchange bias field and coercivity of Pt/Co/(Pt or Au)/Cr2O3/Pt films. When using a Pt-spacer, the perpendicular exchange bias was highly degraded to less than 0.1 erg/cm2, which was about half that of the Au-spacer system. The Au spacer also suppressed the enhancement in coercivity that usually occurs at around room temperature when using Pt. It is suggested that this difference in exchange bias field is due to in-plane interfacial magnetic anisotropy at the Pt/Cr2O3 interface, which cants the interfacial Cr spin from the surface normal and results in degradation in the perpendicular exchange bias.