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Applied Physics Letters -- September 25, 1995 -- Volume 67, Issue 13 pp. 1938-1940

History dependent domain structures in giant-magnetoresistive multilayers

H. T. Hardner and M. B. Weissman

Department of Physics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois 61801-3080

S. S. P. Parkin

IBM Almaden Research Center, San Jose, California 95120-6099

(Received 1 May 1995; accepted 26 July 1995)

Resistance noise measurements of several types reveal the field history dependence of domain structure in sputtered Co/Cu multilayers. We find many smaller domains as the field is decreased from saturation towards zero, but as the field changes sign and is increased in the opposite direction we observe a smaller number of larger domains. Cycling the field without changing its sign preserves the smaller domains, strongly reducing the Barkhausen noise. Discrete fluctuations in resistance due to individual domains yield domain size estimates. ©1995 American Institute of Physics.

DOI: 10.1063/1.114574
PACS: 75.50.Rr, 75.70.-i        Additional Information

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Citing Articles

1. 1/f noise in anisotropic and giant magnetoresistive elements
   R. J. M. van de Veerdonk et al., J. Appl. Phys. 82, 6152 (1997)
2. Observation of a fluctuation-enhanced magnetoresistance in Ni₈₁Fe₁₉/Ag multilayers at high current density
   C. T. Rogers et al., Phys. Rev. B 56 R8503 (1997) [SPIN]