A multi-state synthetic ferrimagnet with controllable switching near room temperature

Abstract

Ferrite composites with temperature-induced magnetization reversal, and synthetic ferrimagnets and antiferromagnets have been of great interest to the scientific community due to their uncommon thermal properties and potential applications in magnetic storage, spintronic devices, and several other fields. One of the advantages of these structures is the strong antiferromagnetic coupling, which stabilizes the magnetization state and gives access to interesting static and dynamical magnetic behaviors. Some of their drawbacks lie in that it is difficult to induce temperature-induced magnetization reversal at room temperature in composites, and that the strong interaction makes it difficult to induce a parallel magnetization state (and thus a high magnetic moment). In this work, we study numerically the magnetization behaviour of a Cu(1 0 0)/Ni/Pt/[Co/Pt]4 synthetic ferrimagnet and show that is possible to revert the sign of its magnetization by varying the temperature in ranges around room temperature. We also show that the four parallel and antiparallel magnetization states are stable at temperatures up to 360 K, and demonstrate that it is possible to change deterministically between these states by increasing the temperature of the device and/or applying a magnetic field, showcasing simultaneous non-hysteretic and hysteretic switching processes induced by temperature. Thus, this structure opens the possibility to have reconfigurable magnetic devices with multiple purposes based on the nature of the different switching events and the interplay between them.