Abstract:
We report the fabrication of polycrystalline Fe/MnPd bilayers, which show the exchange-bias effects. We
show that the exchange-bias effect, described by unidirectional anisotropy, is also accompanied by induced
uniaxial and fourfold in-plane anisotropy contributions in the system. Using the Stoner-Wohlfarth model, all
in-plane anisotropy contributions to the total free energy are determined for the polycrystalline samples from
the fit of the in-plane angular dependence of Heb and the coercivity Hc . A mechanism explaining the presence
of the induced higher-order anisotropy contributions in an exchange-bias system is proposed.
