Strain relaxation induced spin reorientation in Fe films on W(110)

Abstract

We studied Fe double layer films on W(110) to investigate the role of strain relaxation in determination of the magnetic ground states. The spin reorientation transition (SRT) between perpendicular and in-plane magnetization takes place with varying density of dislocation lines as imaged with spin polarized scanning tunneling microscopy/spectroscopy. Unexpected domain wall orientation along W[001] and aperiodic magnetic domain patterns suggest that strain relaxation-induced domain has an easy axis along W[001] rather than W[1 (1) over bar0] in conjunction with the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction. Furthermore, we confirmed that the SRT can be suppressed by reducing the density of the dislocation lines with lower temperature annealing. (C) 2011 American Institute of Physics. [doi: 10.1063/1.3657138]