摘要
The research on exchange coupled ferromagnetic/antiferromagnetic (FM/AF) bilayers has been the foundation of spintronic applications such as hard disk reading heads and spin torque oscillators. In order to further explore the exchange bias behavior of NiCo/(Ni, Co)O bilayers, effect of field cooling process, magnetic angular dependence, and ion-beam bombardment was investigated. The difference in film composition resulted in remarkable distinction in crystalline structures and domain patterns. The exchange bias field (H ex ) in the bilayer systems exhibited a strong angular dependence. The negative H ex after a field cooling process indicated that the polarity of H ex can be defined by aligning the magnetization orientation of the FM NiCo layer with the applied field. Moreover, enhanced exchange bias effect was observed in the NiCo/(Ni, Co)O bilayers that resulted from the surface of the (Ni, Co)O layers bombarded with different Ar + ion-beam energies using End-Hall voltages from 0 V to 150 V. The interface spin structures as well as the surface domain patterns were altered by the ion-beam bombardment process. These results indicated that the exchange bias field of NiCo/(Ni, Co)O bilayer systems could be tailored by field cooling process, angular dependence of magnetic properties, and post ion-beam bombardment.