Domain wall resistance in epitaxial Fe wires

Abstract We studied the magnetoresistance behavior of epitaxial Fe wires grown on GaAs(1 1 0) with varying widths at room temperature. Single nanowires show a wire width (w) dependence of the coercive field, which increases with 1/w for decreasing wire widths. This enables the pinning of a single domain wall in the connection area of two wires with different widths. Magnetoresistance measurements of such wire structures clearly reveal resistance contributions arising from a domain wall. The presence of the domain wall is proven by photoemission electron-microscopy with synchrotron radiation. Moreover, micromagnetic simulations are performed to determine the spin orientations, especially within the domain wall. This permits us to calculate the anisotropic magnetoresistance caused by the domain wall. Taking this into account, we determine the intrinsic domain wall resistance, for which we found a positive value of 0.2%, in agreement with theoretical predictions.