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Phys. Rev. Lett. 71, 185–188 (1993)

Photoinduced antiferromagnetic interlayer coupling in Fe/(Fe-Si) superlattices

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J. E. Mattson, Sudha Kumar, Eric E. Fullerton, S. R. Lee, C. H. Sowers, M. Grimsditch, and S. D. Bader
Materials Science Division, Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, Illinois 60439

F. T. Parker
Center for Magnetic Recording Research, University of California at San Diego, La Jolla, California 92093-0401

Received 18 March 1993; published in the issue dated 5 July 1993

We report photoinduced antiferromagnetic (AF) interlayer coupling in sputtered Fe/(Fe-Si) superlattices. The superlattices are intrinsically AF coupled at room temperature and become increasingly ferromagnetically coupled when cooled below 100 K, but the AF coupling is restored at low temperature by exposure to visible light of sufficient intensity (>10 mW/mm2). These effects are due to charge carriers in the Fe-Si spacer layer which, when thermally or optically generated, are capable of communicating spin information between the Fe layers.

© 1993 The American Physical Society

URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.71.185
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevLett.71.185
PACS:
75.70.Fr, 78.20.Ls, 81.15.Cd
 
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