Investigation of magnetization reversal in micron-sized stripes of epitaxial-grown (110) Laves phase DyFe2 films

A large-scale striped array of width 3.4 ?m has been fabricated in 400-nm-thick epitaxial (1 1 0) DyFe2 films with Laves phase structure using a UV direct write system. The magnetic and magneto-optical properties of the sample were characterized by a vibrating sample magnetometer and magneto-optical Kerr magnetometry, respectively. The close easy-axis [?1 1 0] direction, confirmed by VSM, was chosen for patterning. The MO Kerr loops reveal that an additional anisotropy can be induced by the shape of the stripes, which can obviously enhance the coercivity of the close easy-axis [?1 1 0] loop. The magnitude of this additional anisotropy was determined to be 4.2 × 105 erg/cm3, which is not sufficient to change the coercivity of the hard-axis loop due to a large intrinsic anisotropy along the hard-axis [0 0 1] direction