What is the minimum thickness required for ferromagnetism in thin films?

[vinzie]

Hi,

I am doing my PG. To select a topic for my mini project, I select the topic "Ferromagnetic thin films" Probably I will be covering it's properties, fabrication and applications at some basic level.

So what is the problem is I have no one to guide me here as I am far away from the college and for my personal reasons I am at home and all other professors are on vacation leave. So I need a small guidance to start it off. I googled but lot of information stuffed out there. I am confused how to start. Also different fabrication is mentioned, somewhat complicated for me.

The mini project presentation would be around 20 to 30 mins. So Kindly help me out. I am ready to do hardwork. 3 weeks are there for my project.

Thank You!

 

[Anthus]

Do you have access to any database, i.e. scopus?

Fabrication: say something about sputter deposition, maybe chemical vapour deposition, epitaxy
Properties: you can say something about magnetic domains (see domain theory). For example, in thin films magnetisation is oriented in-plane, i.e. parallel to film surface, due to magnetostatic interaction.
Applications: thin ferromanetic films are used, for example, to create multiferroic heterostructures. It is, in the simpliest case, thin ferromagnetic film sputtered onto ferroelectric crystal. It is multiferroic, because this medium is both ferromagnetic, and ferroelectric. Then, if there exists some kind of interaction between ferroelectric substrate and ferromagnetic film, it may be possible to change magnetisation value, direction, or other magnetic property of film, using electric field, which affects directly substrate.
The main application of this, is RAM - computer memories. In particular, you are able to write "zeros" and "ones" to memory using electric field, what is faster, uses less energy and improve density of data, comparing with magnetic field.

I don't know, what do you expect. If you are interested, I can give you some basic literature about that.

 

[swooshfactory]

One interesting property that I came across in looking at superconductor/ferromagnet thin films is how a minimum thickness is necessary before ferromagnetism sets in. It might be interesting to address this is some facet.