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Physical Review B (Condensed Matter and Materials Physics) -- January 1, 1999 -- Volume 59, Issue 2, pp. 1242-1248

Giant magnetoresistance dependence on the lateral correlation length of the interface roughness in magnetic superlattices

R. Schad

Research Institute for Materials, KU Nijmegen, NL-6525 ED Nijmegen, The Netherlands

P. Beliën, G. Verbanck, V. V. Moshchalkov, and Y. Bruynseraede

Laboratorium voor Vaste-Stoffysika en Magnetisme, KU Leuven, B-3001 Leuven, Belgium

H. E. Fischer

Institute Laue Langevin, 38042 Grenoble Cedex 9, France

S. Lefebvre and M. Bessiere

LURE, Université de Paris-Sud, 91405 Orsay Cedex, France

(Received 2 March 1998; revised 6 August 1998)

The giant magnetoresistance (GMR) observed in magnetic multilayers, is due to spin-dependent electron transport. In order to study the influence of the interface roughness on the spin-dependent scattering we produced epitaxial Fe/Cr(001) superlattices with negligible bulk scattering. The interface roughness was varied by carefully annealing the samples. The vertical and lateral interface roughness components were quantitatively determined by specular and diffuse synchrotron x-ray diffraction using anomalous scattering. We find that the magnitude of the GMR effect increases with decreasing lateral correlation length _x and increasing vertical roughness amplitude . ©1999 The American Physical Society

URL: http://link.aps.org/abstract/PRB/v59/p1242
PACS: 75.70.Pa, 68.35.Ct, 61.10.-i        Additional Information

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