| |
|
| |
|
| |
|
| |
[ Previous
/ Next
Abstract | Issue
Table of Contents | Bottom
of Page ]
| Physical Review B (Condensed Matter and Materials Physics -1(II)) Phys. Rev. B 69, 224410 (2004) (7 pages) |
(Received 1 December 2003; revised 20 April 2004; published 23 June 2004)
A comprehensive experimental study on the antiferromagnetic interlayer exchange coupling in high quality epitaxial all-semiconducting EuS/PbS/EuS trilayers is reported. The influence of substrates, of the thickness of the nonmagnetic PbS spacer layer, and of temperature was investigated by means of SQUID magnetometry. In trilayers with a PbS thickness between 4 and 12 Å the low temperature hysteresis loops showed the signature of antiferromagnetic coupling. The value of the interlayer exchange coupling energy was determined by simulating the data based on a Stoner-Wohlfarth model. An important observation was that the interlayer exchange coupling energy varies strongly with temperature, consistent with a power-law dependence of the exchange coupling constant on the saturation magnetization of the EuS layers. While no theoretical description is readily available, we conjecture that the observed behavior is due to a dependence of the interlayer exchange coupling energy on the exchange splitting of the EuS bands. ©2004 The American Physical Society
URL: http://link.aps.org/abstract/PRB/v69/e224410
doi:10.1103/PhysRevB.69.224410
PACS: 75.30.Et, 75.50.Pp, 75.70.Cn
Additional
Information
The American Physical Society is a member
of CrossRef.