Magnetic reorientation and thermal stability in MnAs/GaAs (100) micro patterns driven by size effects

M. TORTAROLO; F. FERNÁNDEZ BALDIS; M. SIRENA; L. B. STEREN; J. MILANO; V. H. ETGENS; M. EDDRIEF; G. FAINI

JOURNAL OF APPLIED PHYSICS

AMER INST PHYSICS

Lugar: New York; Año: 2012

0021-8979

<!-- @page { margin: 2cm } P { margin-bottom: 0.21cm } --> Size effects and their consequences in the thermal stability of the magnetization of the micro-sized MnAs/GaAs(100) ribbons were studied by magnetic force microscopy. We found out that the orientation in which size is reduced plays a key role in the magnetic configuration and thermal stability of the micro-sized patterns. On the one hand, when reducing the size in the [0001]  - MnAs direction, the system shows an improvement in the thermal stability of the remanent magnetization. On the other hand, when the size is reduced in the [11-20] -MnAs direction, the system goes through a magnetic reconfiguration from in-plane magnetized to out-of-plane magnetized, which also improves the thermal stability.