Magnetoelastic anisotropy of antiferromagnetic materials

Abstract

Antiferromagnetic (AFM) materials are of great interest for spintronics. Here, we report the magnetoelastic anisotropy of an AFM IrMn thin film. An exchange-biased CoFeB/IrMn bilayer was used to obtain a single domain of the AFM thin film, and the magnetic moment arrangement of the AFM layer was deduced from the magnetic hysteresis loop of the pinned FM layer. A uniaxial compressive stress is applied on the thin film through changing the temperature due to the anisotropic thermal expansion of the polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) substrate. Both experimental results and theoretical calculations show that the direction of IrMn magnetic moment can be changed when a compressive stress is applied and the direction of IrMn AFM moment rotates about 10° under 2.26 GPa compressive stress. These results provide important information for the practical application of flexible spintronics based on AFM spintronic devices.