Artificial ferrimagnetic structure and thermal hysteresis in Gd0.47Co0.53/Co multilayers

Gd(0.47)Co(0.53)/Co multilayers are presented as an alternative to classical Gd/Fe or Gd/Co to study ferrimagnetic interactions in an artificial multilayered structure with sharper interfaces, since interdiffusion processes are avoided. This system is shown to present all the characteristic features of Gd/Co and Gd/Fe multilayers, as evidenced by the existence of compensation temperatures, spin-flop transitions, and thermal hysteresis. By using this improved structure, we show that the temperatures at which the sample suffers magnetization reversal when cooling or heating during the thermal hysteresis loop depend on the applied field and coercivity, while anisotropy determines the smoothness of the reversal process. Details of the temperature dependency of coercivity and spin-flop fields in this system are also provided.