In-situ thermal annealing effects on domain wall velocity in Pt/Co/Pt trilayer thin films with perpendicular magnetic anisotropy

Abstract

The Pt/Co/Pt trilayer system is widely studied for its perpendicular magnetic anisotropy (PMA). In this work we delve into the effects of thermal annealing from the perspective of magnetic domain wall dynamics. We find that the coercivity of the films remains constant while the domain wall velocity decreases drastically with thermal annealing (≤473 K). The decrease in the creep scaling constant with annealing temperature, confirm the enhanced pinning effect. Our results demonstrate that annealing temperature can significantly affect the magnetic micro-structure as well as magnetic domain dynamics in Pt/Co/Pt films with PMA.