Static and dynamic magnetic properties of Co2FeAl-based stripe arrays

Abstract

25nm to 50nm Co2FeAl (CFA) thick wire arrays with varying widths and spacing have been patterned from continuous CFA films deposited on MgO(001) using e-beam lithography and Ar ion milling. Magneto-optical Kerr effect, transverse bias initial inverse susceptibility and torque measurements reveal that the in-plane magnetic anisotropy of the wires is dominantly monitored by a uniaxial term, in contrast with the continuous films where it is governed by the superposition of a fourfold term and of a smaller uniaxial term. The microstrip ferromagnetic resonance spectra performed using a magnetic field H, applied in the plane of the studied sample along various directions, or perpendicularly to this plane, gave us access to various quantized modes originating from the patterning. In addition, Brillouin light scattering also exhibits quantized modes. A large part of the experimental observations can be quantitatively interpreted as resulting from the demagnetizing terms induced by the geometrical patterning. However, the presented model, simply built on the effect of the demagnetizing field, is not able to give account of all the quantized modes present in the resonance spectra. When H is parallel to the wires, a more complete description is used: it considers the wave-vector quantization induced by the patterning. For the magnetic modes concerned by both approaches, the correspondence between the 2 models is easily established. When H is not parallel to the wires quantitative descriptions of the behavior of the field dependence of the observed modes still can often be performed. Finally, in all the studied patterned samples, the uniform magnetic mode, termed “film mode”, relative to the parent continuous film is observed by ferromagnetic resonance: such a behavior, which has been reported previously, remains to be completely interpreted.