Non-uniform magnetization reversal in stressed thin ferromagnetic films

Abstract The effect of applied mechanical stresses on the magnetization reversal, well known as inverse magnetostriction effect, is studied for thin ferromagnetic films. The model used, is a micromagnetic one proposed in (Voltairas et al., Int. J. Eng. Sci., in press). Numerical non-uniform (NU) solutions for the Brown’ s magnetoelastic equations are presented and compared with uniform Stoner–Wolfarth (SW) ones. We study only the case where the applied stresses are oriented perpendicular to the field's direction (Case 1 of (Voltairas et al., Int. J. Eng. Sci., in press)). The dependence of coercivity and remanence on applied stress and thin film thickness is discussed. The framework for stability analysis is developed, but it is applied only to the saturation solutions of the NU modes, which are proved to be unstable. Energy considerations confirm that the NU modes are unfavorable ones throughout the magnetization reversal.