Finite image size effects on the characterization of magnetic domain patterns via magnetic force microscopy

Optimizing magnetic thin films for nanotechnologies often requires imaging nanoscale magnetic domain patterns via magnetic microscopy. The finite size of the image may however significantly affect the characterization of the observed magnetic states. We evaluated finite image size effects on the characterization of a variety of stripe and bubble domain patterns exhibited by ferromagnetic Co/Pt multilayers with perpendicular magnetic anisotropy, where the domain size (stripe width and bubble diameter) is around 100 nm. If the image size is too small, below ∼5 μm, it may cause a significant underestimation of average domain size and overestimation of domain density by up to a factor 5 when reducing the image size from about 20 μm to about a 1 μm. Using a criterion based on how the excess density evolves with image size, we found that to obtain reliable statistical estimates of domain density and average domain size, the image needs to be large enough, and include at least about 100 stripes or about 2500 bubbles.