Chapter 41 Rare earth alloys and compounds as thin films

Nanostructuring of GdFeCo Thin Films for Laser Induced Magnetization Switching

“…This multi-domain state needs to be investigated in more detail and might be related to strain relaxation, thickness variation or oxidation at the edge of the structures 1) . The de-coupled nature of the magnetization state of these structures is also stable against laser pulse heating.…”

“…Amorphous alloys of rare earth-transition metals have been extensively studied in the 1970's 1) and have found technological application as storage and read-out layers in magneto-optical disks 2) . The interest for this class of materials was renewed with the recent discovery that, in GdFeCo ferrimagnetic amorphous alloys, a single femtosecond circularly polarized laser pulse can reverse the magnetization without the need of applying any external magnetic field 3) .…”

“…Moreover, for the thermal stability of the recorded information, it is preferable to preserve the out-of-plane magnetic anisotropy. The later is the result of many different factors including stress and atomic pair ordering 1) , and is unstable even against moderate annealing 8) , rendering the structuring of these thin films quite a challenging task.…”