Description of spin reorientation transition in Au/Co/Au sandwich with Co film thickness within a simple phenomenological model of ferromagnetic film

Simple phenomenological model of ferromagnetic film characterized by equal energies of surface anisotropies at two sides of a film (symmetric film) is considered. The model is used to describe a two-step spin reorientation transition (SRT) in Au/Co/Au sandwich with Co film thickness: the SRT from perpendicular to canted noncollinear (CNC) state at N-perpendicular to = 6.3 atomic layers and the subsequent SRT from CNC to in-plane state at N-parallel to = 10.05 atomic layers. Analytic expressions for the stability criterion of collinear perpendicular and in-plane states of a film are derived with account of discrete location of atomic layers. The dependence of borders that separate regions corresponding to various magnetic states of a film in the (k(B),k(S))-diagram on film thickness N is established. k(S)(k(B)) is surface (bulk) reduced anisotropy constant. The comparison of theory with experiment related to Au/Co/Au sandwich shows that there is a whole region in the (k(B),k(S))-diagram corresponding to experimentally determined values of threshold film thicknesses N-perpendicular to = 6.3 and N-parallel to = 10.05. The comparison of this region with similar region determined earlier for a bare Co/Au film within the same model of asymmetric film and characterized by N-perpendicular to = 3.5, N-parallel to = 5.5 shows that the intersection of these regions is not empty. Hence, both the SRT in Au/Co/Au sandwich and in bare Co/Au film with Co film thickness can be described within the same model using the same magnitudes of model parameters k(S), k(B). Based on this result we conclude that the energy of Neel surface anisotropy at free Co surface is negligible compared to the energy of Co-Au interface anisotropy. It is demonstrated that the destabilization of collinear states in symmetric film leads to occurrence of the ground CNC state and two novel metastable CNC states. These three CNC states exhibit different kinds of symmetry. In case of asymmetric film only ground CNC state occurs on destabilization of collinear states of a film. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.