Thermally assisted domain wall nucleation in perpendicular anisotropy trilayer nanowires

Abstract

We study thermally assisted domain wall (DW) generation in perpendicular magnetic anisotropy CoFeB trilayer nanowires by the effect of Joule heating. The anomalous Hall effect is utilized to detect magnetization reversal in order to study the DW generation. We observe a statistical distribution in the switching process which is consistent with the thermal activation process. Our results show that the proposed method provides an efficient way for generating DWs in perpendicular magnetic nanowires at predefined locations. © 2014 IOP Publishing Ltd.