Spontaneous magnetization reversal and positive exchange bias effect in CoFeSiB/FeCrO3 heterostructures

Abstract

The exchange bias (EB) phenomenon is an interface-driven effect; it depends on the interface spin configuration, which in turn is immensely related to antiferromagnetic spin configuration. Here, we chose an antiferromagnet, FeCrO3, with a corundum structure with randomly occupied cations. We report EB in the bilayer heterostructures that are composed of an amorphous CoFeSiB ferromagnet interfaced with an epitaxial FeCrO3 layer fabricated in-situ by pulsed laser deposition. The bilayers exhibit crossover from conventional negative EB to positive EB from room temperature down to 5 K. The crossover occurs for a cooling field that exceeds the interfacial coupling strength at the interface. Systems that show positive EB effects sometimes also display spontaneous magnetization reversal; the present bilayers showed spontaneous EB below 50 K. Temperature and field-dependent magnetisation studies reveal that the prepared heterostructure consists of uncompensated interface spins due to the disorder in the FeCrO3 layer that gets frozen at low temperatures, pins the spins in the ferromagnetic layer and causes the spontaneous EB effect.