Micromagnetic modeling is used to study the energetics of magnetic switching of single-layer permalloy nanowire. The energy landscape of the system is studied using Nudged Elastic Band method. Using different initial guess trajectories for NEB minimization several alternative minimal energy transition paths were found corresponding to possible scenarios of magnetic switching of the nanowire through nucleation and propagation of transverse domain walls. Dependence of energy barrier for DW nucleation on lateral sizes of the nanowire has been studied. Besides that, the effect of additional constant external bias magnetic fields (longitudinal and transverse) on nanowire switching has been explored. It has been shown that presence of rectangular shape notch on the nanowire long side leads to the appearance of local minimum on the energy profile. Thus artificially created notches can be used for DW pinning.

Date Published: 15 March 2019
PDF: 11 pages
Proc. SPIE 11022, International Conference on Micro- and Nano-Electronics 2018, 110221L (15 March 2019); doi: 10.1117/12.2521401

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 11022:
International Conference on Micro- and Nano-Electronics 2018
Vladimir F. Lukichev; Konstantin V. Rudenko, Editor(s)