Structure and Magnetic Properties of Exchange-biased Polycrystalline Fe/MnPd Bilayers

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.

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Citation
Tang, Y., et al. (2000): Structure and Magnetic Properties of Exchange-biased Polycrystalline Fe/MnPd Bilayers, Physical Review B, 62(13).