Studying spintronics materials with soft X-ray resonant scattering

Abstract Soft X-ray resonant magnetic scattering offers a unique element-, site- and valence-specific probe to study magnetic structures on a length scale from 1 to 1000 nm. This new technique, which combines X-ray scattering with X-ray magnetic circular and linear dichroism, is ideally suited to investigate magnetic superlattices and magnetic stripe domains. Recent results that are presented here include element-specific magnetic studies on interfaces, thin films, magnetic multilayers, self-organising magnetic domain structures, magnetic layer profiles, patterned samples, and magnetic nanoobjects using coherent X-rays. Soft X-ray diffraction to study the interplay between charge, spin and orbital ordering in correlated 3d transition metal systems, such as manganites, is also discussed.