Abstract
It is now well established that interlayer coupling is characterized by oscillations between ferro (F)- and antiferro- (AF) magnetic type coupling with long- and short periods1–5 The antialigned state due to AF coupling is often associated with a giant magnetoresistance (GMR)-effect6.7. Also a contribution to the interaction has been found which wants to align the magnetic films on both sides of the interlayer perpendicular to each other8.9. We refer to this in the following as 90° — or biquadratic coupling. Although a strong effect of the growth and structure of the samples on the coupling is expected so far the situation is rather unclear. It appears that AF type coupling and long period oscillations are easier to obtain for polycrystalline samples obtained by sputtering. Recently the relation between the GMR and interface roughness has been studied and established10. However whereas a relation between roughness and GMR is reasonable one would intuitively think that the strongest coupling should be obtained for samples with the smoothest interfaces. The observation that these should be the sputtered polycrystalline and not the epitaxial ones comes somewhat as a surprise.
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