Domain wall pinning in ultra-narrow electromigrated break junctions

Abstract

The study of magnetic domain walls in constrained geometries is an important topic, yet when dealing with extreme nanoscale magnetic systems artefacts can often dominate the measurements and obscure the effects of intrinsic magnetic origin. In this work we study the evolution of domain wall depinning in electromigrated ferromagnetic junctions which are both initially fabricated and subsequently tailored in-situ in clean ultra-high vacuum conditions. Carefully designed Ni80Fe20 (Permalloy) notched half-ring structures are fabricated and investigated as a function of constriction width by tailoring the size of the contact using controlled in-situ electromigration. It is found that the domain wall pinning strength is increased on reducing the contact size in line with a reduction of the wall energy in narrower constrictions. Furthermore, the angular dependency and symmetry of the depinning field is measured to determine the full pinning potential for a domain wall in a system with a narrow constriction.