Coercivity mechanisms in lithographed antidot arrays

¹  Instituto de Ciencia de Materiales de Madrid, CSIC - 28049 Cantoblanco, Madrid, Spain
²  UA ICMM-IMA - 28049 Cantoblanco, Madrid, Spain
³  Departamento de Física Aplicada a las T.I., UPM - Cra. de Valencia, Km. 7, 28031 Madrid, Spain
⁴  Instituto de Ciencia de Materiales de Aragón, Departamento de Física de la Materia Condensada (CSIC-Universidad de Zaragoza) - C/Pedro Cebuna 12, 50009, Zaragoza, Spain

Corresponding author: fgarcias@icmm.csic.es

Received: 13 June 2008
Accepted: 12 November 2008

Abstract

The broad prospects for the practical uses of magnetic nanostructures make the control of their magnetization reversal processes a very relevant research field, particularly considering that different processes, associated to largely different sets of hysteretic parameters, can be implemented through the control of the shape and size of the nanostructures. We analyze in this work, within the framework of a micromagnetic model, the magnetization reversal processes occurring in antidot arrays and, in particular, the efficiency of these arrays as i) pinning structures for the propagation of externally to the array nucleated domain walls and ii) nucleation centers for the magnetization reversal processes from within the array. From our simulational analysis, whose results we have experimentally validated, it is concluded that the measurement of the angular dependence of the coercive force can be used as a useful tool to identify the actually occurring reversal process.