Chirality Switching and Winding or Unwinding of the Antiferromagnetic NiO Domain Walls in Fe/NiO/Fe/CoO/Ag(001)
Published Web Location
https://journals.aps.org/prl/pdf/10.1103/PhysRevLett.113.147207Abstract
Fe/NiO/Fe/CoO/Ag(001) single crystalline films were grown epitaxially and investigated by x-ray magnetic circular dichroism and x-ray magnetic linear dichroism. The bottom Fe layer magnetization is pinned through exchange coupling to the CoO layer and the top Fe layer magnetization can be rotated by an in-plane external magnetic field. We find that the NiO spins wind up to form a domain wall due to the perpendicular NiO/Fe interfacial coupling as the top layer Fe magnetization rotates from 0° to 90°, but switch wall chirality and unwind the wall as the Fe magnetization rotates from 90° to 180°. This observation shows that Mauri's 180° domain wall does not exist in perpendicularly coupled ferromagnetic-antiferromagnetic systems in the strong coupling regime.
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