Field cooling induced changes in the antiferromagnetic structure of NiO films

Abstract

The magnetic field cooling induced magnetic changes in NiO antiferromagnetic films was analyzed using magnetic linear dichroism. Two different NiO layers namely textured layer and an untextured layer at antiferromagnet/ferromagnet (AF/F) interfaces were also observed. Both the layers were found to exhibit exchange-bias induced in-parallel magnetic anisotropy of nearly equal magnitude. The exchange biasing process, namely repopulation of antiferromagnetic domains was also observed using these results.