Analysis of anisotropy crossover due to oxygen in Pt/Co/MOx trilayer

Aurélien Manchon (1) , Clarisse Ducruet (1, 2) , Lucien Lombard (1) , Stéphane Auffret (1) , Bernard Rodmacq (1) , Bernard Dieny (1) , Stefania Pizzini (3) , Jan Vogel (3) , Vojtech Uhlir (3) , Michael Hochstrasser (4) , Giancarlo Panaccione (5)

1 SPINTEC - SPINtronique et TEchnologie des Composants
2 CRETA - Consortium de Recherches pour l'Emergence des Technologies Avancées
3 NEEL - MNM - Micro et NanoMagnétisme
4 Laboratory for Solid State Physics
5 Laboratory TASC

Extraordinary Hall effect and X-ray spectroscopy measurements have been performed on a series of Pt/Co/MOx trilayers (M=Al, Mg, Ta...) in order to investigate the role of oxidation in the onset of perpendicular magnetic anisotropy at the Co/MOx interface. It is observed that varying the oxidation time modifies the magnetic properties of the Co layer, inducing a magnetic anisotropy crossover from in-plane to out-of-plane. We focused on the influence of plasma oxidation on Pt/Co/AlOx perpendicular magnetic anisotropy. The interfacial electronic structure is analyzed via X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy measurements. It is shown that the maximum of out-of-plane magnetic anisotropy corresponds to the appearance of a significant density of Co-O bondings at the Co/AlOx interface.

Mots clés: X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy; X-ray absorption spectroscopy; Magnetic tunnel junctions; Perpendicular magnetic anisotropy

Domaines: Systèmes mésoscopiques et effet Hall quantique [cond-mat.mes-hall]; Science des matériaux [cond-mat.mtrl-sci]

Aurélien Manchon, Clarisse Ducruet, Lucien Lombard, Stéphane Auffret, Bernard Rodmacq, et al.. Analysis of anisotropy crossover due to oxygen in Pt/Co/MOx trilayer. Journal of Applied Physics, 2008, 104 (4), pp.043914. ⟨10.1063/1.2969711⟩. ⟨hal-00196134⟩