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Field-tunable correlations in perpendicular artificial spin ice arrays

ORAL

Abstract

Artificial spin ice (ASI) provides an effective platform for the study of custom designed frustration and its relationship with geometry, interaction, and stochasticity. Perpendicular ASI is particularly useful in this context, as the state of each element in a lattice is readily accessed using Kerr microscopy and the microstate of the entire lattice can be characterized through an applied field protocol. Unfortunately, studies of perpendicular ASI have been limited by weak interactions between elements. We have overcome this limitation by fabricating perpendicular ASI systems from Pt/Co islands on a soft-magnetic Ni80Fe20(Py) underlayer to increase interactions. In the simplest case, the Py is saturated and serves to break the lateral symmetry in the arrays. We show that this configuration leads to a highly tunable system with unusual properties such as directionally-tunable interactions, preferred next-nearest neighbor coupling, and in situ adjustable coordination number. This project was funded by the US Department of Energy, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Materials Sciences and Engineering Division under Grant No. DE- SC0010778

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Presenters

  • Susan Kempinger

    North Central College

Authors

  • Susan Kempinger

    North Central College

  • Yu-Sheng Huang

    Penn State University

  • Paul Edward Lammert

    Penn State University

  • Michael Vogel

    Argonne National Lab, Argonne Natl Lab

  • john pearson

    Argonne National Lab, Materials Science Division, Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne National Laboratory, Materials Science Division, Argonne Natl Lab, Argonne Natl Lab

  • Axel Hoffmann

    University of Illinois, Materials Science and Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, Argonne National Laboratory, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Materials Science and Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Materials Science Division, Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne Natl Lab

  • Vincent Crespi

    Penn State University, Pennsylvania State University

  • Peter E Schiffer

    Yale University

  • Nitin Samarth

    Penn State University, Pennsylvania State University, Department of Physics, The Pennsylvania State University, Physics, Pennsylvania State University