Extraordinary Hall effect and X-ray spectroscopy measurements have been performed on a series of Pt/Co/MOx trilayers (M=Al, Mg, Ta...) in order to investigate the role of oxidation in the onset of perpendicular magnetic anisotropy at the Co/MOx interface. It is observed that varying the oxidation time modifies the magnetic properties of the Co layer, inducing a magnetic anisotropy crossover from in-plane to out-of-plane. We focused on the influence of plasma oxidation on Pt/Co/AlOx perpendicular magnetic anisotropy. The interfacial electronic structure is analyzed via X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy measurements. It is shown that the maximum of out-of-plane magnetic anisotropy corresponds to the appearance of a significant density of Co-O bondings at the Co/AlOx interface.
@article{arxiv.0712.1905,
title = {Analysis of anisotropy crossover due to oxygen in Pt/Co/MOx trilayer},
author = {Aurélien Manchon and Clarisse Ducruet and Lucien Lombard and Stéphane Auffret and Bernard Rodmacq and Bernard Dieny and Stefania Pizzini and Jan Vogel and Vojtech Uhlir and Michael Hochstrasser and Giancarlo Panaccione},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0712.1905},
year = {2015}
}