Ultrathin Magnetic Structures III (eBook)

Bret Heinrich: Professor Physics Department, Simon Fraser University, Director Surface Physics Laboratory , SFU; Fellow of American Physical Society; Associate member of Canadian Institute for Advanced Research CIAR); member of Canadian European Research Initiative on Nanostructures (CERION II); a fellow of Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, member of Advisory Committee, Annual Conference on Magnetism and Magnetic Materials (MMM), American Institute of Physics; member of International Advisory Committee, International Colloquium on Thin Films and Surfaces (ICMFS). Anthony Bland: Professor at the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge University, Fellow of the Institute of Physics (UK), and Fellow of Selwyn College has directed the Thin Film Magnetism group at the Cavendish Laboratory since 1989. He frequently serves as an advisory committee member (Rutherford Laboratory, UK and various international conferences) and was awarded the Wohlfarth prize by the Institute of Physics and the Institute of Electrical Engineers in 1999.

Preface 5
Contents 7
Contributors 11
Acronyms 13
1 Introduction 15
2 Electron Transport in Magnetic Multilayers 18
2.1 Introduction 18
2.2 Transport Theory for Inhomogeneous Materials 19
2.3 Free Electrons with Random Point Scatterers 20
2.4 The Semiclassical Approach to Transport 27
2.5 Electronic Structure 33
2.6 Transport in Layered Systems 39
2.7 Giant Magnetoresistance 50
2.8 Landauer Approach to Ballistic Transport 56
2.9 Spin-Dependent Tunnelling 58
References 62
3 Spin Polarized Electron Tunneling 64
3.1 Tunneling Between Two Free-Electron Metals 65
3.2 Role of the Density of States in Tunneling 67
3.3 The Beginnings of Spin Dependent Tunneling 70
3.4 Fabrication and Characterization of FM- Al2O3- FM Junctions 78
3.5 Hallmark Features of MTJs 81
3.6 Recent Magnetic Tunnel Junction Experiments 90
3.7 Outlook and Conclusions 103
References 105
4 Interlayer Exchange Coupling 111
4.1 Introduction 111
4.2 Experiment 115
4.3 Physical Mechanism for Bilinear Coupling 119
4.4 Other Coupling Mechanisms 130
4.5 Specific Systems 140
4.6 Summary 147
References 148
5 Spin Relaxation in Magnetic Metallic Layers and Multilayers 155
5.1 Introduction 155
5.2 Magnetic Equations of Motion 156
5.3 FMR Linewidth 161
5.4 Intrinsic Damping in Metals, Theory 164
5.5 Magnetic Relaxations in Multilayers 183
5.6 Non-local Damping: Experiment 198
5.7 Extrinsic Damping 205
References 218
6 Nonequilibrium Spin Dynamics in Laterally Defined Magnetic Structures 223
6.1 Introduction 223
6.2 Experimental Methods 225
6.3 Experimental Results for Magnetization Reversal Dynamics 234
6.4 Conclusion and Outlook 241
References 242
7 Polarised Neutron Reflection Studies of Thin Magnetic Films 245
7.1 Introduction 245
7.2 Theoretical Basis 247
7.3 Polarised Neutron Reflection Magnetometry 266
7.4 Conclusions 286
References 287
8 X-ray Scattering Studies of Ultrathin Metallic Structures 297
8.1 Introduction 297
8.2 Reflectivity Measurements of Interfacial Structure 299
8.3 Wide-angle Diffraction Measurements of Layered Structures 313
8.4 Outlook 321
References 322
Subject Index 326