Domain Wall Motion in Materials with Perpendicular Magnetic Anisotropy

Abstract

This Thesis reports on our theoretical and experimental study of the motion of magnetic domains in perpendicular magnetic anisotropy materials. We show that spatial fluctuations of the DMI give rise to a local in plane magnetic field parallel to the domain wall. Our calculations on the atomic scale also point out that the sign and magnitude of the DMI strength is strongly related to the interface structure. This result motivated our experimental study on interface effects which shows that the in-plane magnetic field dependence of the domain wall motion is governed by sample growth parameters. We show that in-plane field effects enter the creep theory in novel ways. Our work leads to new insights concerning the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya-Interaction, in-plane magnetic fields, creep theory and effects of the conditions under which the studied samples are grown.