STRIPES ROTATION AND MAGNETIC ANISOTROPY OF TbFeGa ALLOYS

Magnetic films with perpendicular magnetic anisotropy (PMA) are attractive materials for applications in the fields of high density magnetic recording and spintronics. The magnetic domains orientation is known to affect the signal propagation through these materials when used in spintronic devices. Recently, the PMA of TbFeGa alloys has been demonstrated [1]. In this work TbFeGa films were deposited by cosputtering, using two targets of TbFe2 and Fe3Ga. The effect of the type of power source (DC or pulsed) used in each target on the magnetic domain configuration has been investigated. It was found that the evaporation conditions strongly influence the out of plane (OOP) anisotropy of the films. Magnetic force microscopy (MFM), which shows the presence of stripe domains (fig. 1), has been used to investigate the rotatable anisotropy of these alloys. A magnetic field of variable intensity placed at 90 degrees with respect to the stripes direction has been applied, while in-field MFM images were recorded. The results clearly show the correlation between OOP and rotatable anisotropies, which allows to control the stripe domains rotation process and therefore the stripes orientation, by changing the films preparation conditions