https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2013-30935-4
Regular Article
Transverse magnetization in Cu/Ni/Cu epitaxial nanorings*
1 Instituto de Ciencia de Materiales de
Aragón, Consejo Superior de
Investigaciones Científicas, 50009
Zaragoza,
Spain
2 Laboratorio de Microscopías
Avanzadas, Instituto de Nanociencia de Aragón, Universidad de Zaragoza,
50018
Zaragoza,
Spain
3 Departamento de Física de la Materia
Condensada, Universidad de Zaragoza, 50009
Zaragoza,
Spain
4 Department of Materials Science and
Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge
MA
02139-4307,
USA
a
e-mail: ciria@unizar.es
Received:
12
October
2012
Received in final form:
10
January
2013
Published online:
8
April
2013
The micromagnetic structure in epitaxial (001)-oriented Cu/Ni(14 nm)/Cu rings fabricated by electron beam and focused ion beam lithographies with external diameter of 3 μm and linewidths between 100 and 500 nm is presented. We found that a state with radial orientation of the magnetization prevails at remanence. The evaluation of the magnetoelastic, magnetocrystalline and magnetostatic energies shows that a value as low as 1.5 × 10-3 for the anisotropic relaxation of the in-plane strain components is enough to induce an effective radial easy magnetization direction.
© EDP Sciences, Società Italiana di Fisica and Springer-Verlag, 2013