Investigation of 90° coupling in Fe/Ag/Fe structures: ‘‘Loose spins’’ and fluctuation mechanism

Results are outlined of experimental work concerning Slonczewski’s theories explaining 90° coupling: ‘‘loose spin’’ theory and thickness-fluctuation mechanism. The loose spin theory suggests that 90° coupling originates from paramagnetic impurities in the interlayer of an exchange-coupled layered structure. The influence of these paramagnetic impurities on the magnetic exchange coupling was studied using the wedge technique. High-quality single-crystalline Fe/Ag/Fe samples were prepared in UHV and each sample consisted of two wedges: one wedge with additional Fe deliberately inserted during growth into the Ag interlayer and one wedge with a pure Fe/Ag/Fe structure. The detailed analysis of magneto-optic hysteresis loops revealed quantitatively the bilinearly and the 90° coupling strength. As predicted by loose spin theory additional Fe in the Ag spacer lead to a strong temperature dependence of the 90° coupling. According to the theory an increase of 90° coupling strength proportional to impurity concentration was detected while the strength of bilinear coupling decreased. For the pure Fe/Ag/Fe structure, a linear increase of the 90° coupling strength with decreasing temperature was observed. This result can be explained within the fluctuation mechanism which creates 90° coupling through a combination of interface roughness and intralayer ferromagnetic exchange.