Size effects on characteristic magnetic fields of a spin-valve multilayer by computer simulation

Abstract

The change in characteristic magnetic fields of a spin-valve multilayer is investigated as a function of the size by computer simulation. The spin-valve modeled in this work is IrMn (9 nm/CoFe (4 nm)/Cu (2.6 nm)/CoFe (2 nm)/NiFe (6 nm). The spin-valve dimensions are varied widely from 20 mm x 10 mm to 0.5 mum x 0.25 mum, but the aspect ratio defined by the ratio of the length to the width is fixed at 2.0. The magnetostatic interactions begin to affect the magnetic properties substantially at a spin-valve length of 5 mum, and, at a length of 1 mum, they become even more dominant. The main consequences of the magnetostatic interactions are a significant increase of the coercivity and a very large shift of the bias field in both the pinned and free layers. It is shown that these changes can be explained by two separate contributions to the total magnetostatic interactions: the coercivity change by the self-demagnetizing field and the change of the bias field by the interlayer magnetostatic interaction field. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.