Micromagnetic Simulation on the Interelement Coupling of High-Density Patterned Film

Abstract

In this paper, the magnetic properties of an individual square permalloy (Ni80Fe20) nanoelement at the center of an array with both in-plane shape anisotropy and interelement interaction were investigated by the 3-D object oriented micromagnetic framework. Variation of the interelement coupling was studied by changing the element lateral size ( a ) and interelement spacing ( s ). Magnetic hysteresis loop and dependence of saturation field on s/a ( R ) of the individual element at the center of array indicate that dipolar interaction dominates the magnetic properties of array with small R ( R ≤ 1), whereas at R > 1, the interelement interaction can be ignored, and therefore, the shape anisotropy plays an important role in determining both the strength and the direction of magnetic moments. Moreover, for small R , the global easy axis is along the direction of element edge, and with increasing R , the easy axis appears to gradually turn to the diagonal direction. It is noteworthy that the corresponding conversion points of the easy axis on R decrease from 0.6 to 0.3 as increasing a from 10 to 20 nm, indicating the effect of interelement coupling is weaker in array with a larger element lateral size. The collective magnetic behavior of array is also investigated for comparison.