Correlation Between Domain Behavior and Magnetic Properties of Materials

Correlation between length scales in the field of magnetism has long been a topic of intensive study. The long-term desire is simple: to determine one theory that completely describes the magnetic behavior of matter from an individual atomic particle all the way up to large masses of material. One key piece to this puzzle is connecting the behavior of a material's domains on the nanometer scale with the magnetic properties of an entire large sample or device on the centimeter scale. In the first case study involving the FeSiAl thin films, contrast and spacing of domain patterns are clearly related to microstructure and stress. Case study 2 most clearly demonstrates localized, incoherent domain wall motion switching with field applied along an easy axis for a square hysteresis loop. In case study 3, axis-specific images of the complex Gd-Si-Ge material clearly show the influence of uniaxial anisotropy. Case study 4, the only study with the sole intent of creating domain structures for imaging, also demonstrated in fairly simple terms the effects of increasing stress on domain patterns. In case study 5, it was proven that the width of magnetoresistance loops could be quantitatively predicted using only MFM. When all of the case studies are considered together, a dominating factor seems to be that of anisotropy, both magneticrostaylline and stress induced. Any quantitative bulk measurements heavily reliant on K coefficients, such as the saturation fields for the FeSiAl films, H{sub c} in cases 1, 3, and 5, and the uniaxial character of the Gd{sub 5}(Si{sub 2}Ge{sub 2}), transferred to and from the domain scale quite well. In-situ measurements of domain rotation and switching, could also be strongly correlated with bulk magnetic properties, including coercivity, M{sub s}, and hysteresis loop shape. In most cases, the qualitative nature of the domain structures, when properly considered, matched quite well to what might have been expected from theory and calculation, and provided such information in a matter of minutes. In fact, typical characterization in each of these studies was far more complete and reliable with domain imagery to back it up--especially the single crystal and applied field pictures. In these simple cases, it appears that domain imagery may be close to standing alone in magnetic characterization. The surprises in the 10 nm CoFeHfO film, the complexity seen in the polycrystalline Gd-Si-Ge sample and the broad range predictions of the K{sub 1} of the same reinforce the unreliability of making concrete statements based purely on domain imagery of any type, but it may be possible to create standards similar to the types used in optical microscopy for metallography in these complex cases