Origin of biquadratic exchange in Fe/Si/Fe

The thickness and temperature dependences of the interlayer exchange coupling in well-defined molecular beam epitaxy-grown Fe/Si/Fe sandwich structures have been studied. The biquadratic coupling shows a strong temperature dependence in contrast to the bilinear coupling. Both depend exponentially on...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inPhysical review letters Vol. 84; no. 8; p. 1812
Main Authors Strijkers, GJ, Kohlhepp, JT, Swagten, HJ, de Jonge WJ
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published United States 21.02.2000
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Summary:The thickness and temperature dependences of the interlayer exchange coupling in well-defined molecular beam epitaxy-grown Fe/Si/Fe sandwich structures have been studied. The biquadratic coupling shows a strong temperature dependence in contrast to the bilinear coupling. Both depend exponentially on thickness. These observations can be well understood in the framework of Slonczewski's loose spins model [J. Appl. Phys. 73, 5957 (1993)]. No bilinear contribution of the loose spins to the coupling was observed.
ISSN:1079-7114
DOI:10.1103/PhysRevLett.84.1812