Determination of rotatable anisotropy in exchange-biased bilayers using anisotropic magnetoresistance technique

Abstract

We improved the anisotropic magnetoresistance model to determine the quantity and direction of rotatable anisotropy in FeMn/NiFe structures independent of the thickness of the antiferromagnet layer. In our model, there are two important parameters, the magnitude α=Hrot/Hex and direction β=θrot/θa of rotatable anisotropy, where Hrot and θrot are an effective magnetic field and angle of a rotatable anisotropy, and Hex and θa are the exchange bias field and angle of applied field. As FeMn thickness decreased from 20 nm to 3.5 nm, α value increased from about 0.15 to 0.55. This proves that weak exchange coupling regions increase as the antiferromagnet thickness decreases. The α and β almost did not change as the NiFe thickness increases from 7 nm to 15 nm, even if the Hex was reduced from 170 Oe to 70 Oe.