BLS Backscattering Experimental Setup Designs and Magnetic Measurements of Thin Films

Magnetic thin films are important for a variety of applications that include digital storage and information technology. We are particularly interested in multilayered samples with a perpendicular (out-of-plane) anisotropy and an interfacial DMI (Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction) that can promote the formation of topologically-protected spin textures called skyrmions. We are using Brillouin light scattering (BLS) to measure the DMI and vibrating sample magnetometry (VSM) to measure the coercivity, saturation magnetization, and saturation field of these thin films. During the summer 2018 CSU Chemistry REU program, I designed and machined a sample holder for a new BLS experiment setup and used VSM to collect magnetic hysteresis loops for a series of magnetic thin films. The magnet and the sample holder I machined will soon be incorporated into the new BLS setup. The magnetic hysteresis measurements from the thin films provide important information on the film material properties, and they also give us advanced knowledge of the applied field strengths that are needed for the BLS measurements.