Estudo via simulação computacional da dinâmica da magnetização em nanomagnetos contendo uma distribuição de impurezas magnéticas

Abstract

During the last decades the magnetization dynamics in nanostructured systems has become a subject of relevance from fundamental micromagnetism as well as for their new potential technological applications. Nanomagnets are interesting systems to study exotic magnetic structures like vortices, skyrmions and domain walls. The detailed understanding of the static and dynamic properties of these nanoscale spin configurations is a crucial requirement for the realization of future spintronic device. Due to the shape anisotropy that originates from dipolar interaction, the magnetic configurations that emerge in nanostructured systems are very sensitive to the geometric form and dimensions of the nanomagnet. This work is focused on the study of planar nanomagnets, in the formats of disk and strip, made of a soft magnetic material like Permalloy. The magnetic vortex is observed in a nanodisk with appropriate dimensions, because it is an intermediate state between the mono and multi-domain regimes. Under suitable conditions, a single transverse domain wall can be experimentally injected into a rectangular nanowire. Both the vortex core and the wall behaves as a quasiparticle, whose the properties can be manipulated by an external agent (magnetic field or spin polarized current). At low excitation amplitudes, it is known that the vortex describes a circular movement, whereas the wall is restricted to an unidirectional movement. In this regime, each quasiparticle evolves without changing its polarity; a structural property associated with a two-fold degenerate state. For an excitation amplitude strong enough, the quasiparticle experiences a deformation on its structure so that, it occurs the switching of the polarity. From the technological point of view, the control of the polarity reversing mechanism is fundamental, because this two-fold degeneracy can work as "zero"or "one", being useful to encode information for data storage or even to perform logical operations. Some works reported that nanomagnets containing defects can influence or modify strongly the dynamic of the quasiparticle. Imperfections are generated during the fabrication process of the nanomagnets or else they can be intentionally incorporated for a specific purpose. As an example, in order to control the domain wall motion it is very important to impose certain positions along the nanowire where the wall can stop. There are several means of establishing such critical points for the quasiparticle. Variations of geometry, cavities, notches, and so on can be classified as non-magnetic defects. Generally, this type of defect acts as a pinning site for the quasiparticle. A magnetic defect emerges from an inhomogeneity of the magnetic environment, in other words, a local variation of the magnetic properties. In a previous study, our team has modeled a magnetic impurity as a local variation of the exchange constant. As an immediate result of the insertion of a magnetic impurity into a nanomagnet, we have demonstrated via numerical simulations that magnetic impurities can induce two types of traps for the quasiparticle: a local reduction of the exchange constant corresponds to a pinning site (potential well), whereas a local increase of the exchange constant represents a blocking site (potential barrier). This thesis investigates the dynamic of the quasiparticle confined by a distribution of magnetic impurities: for the case of the vortex core it has been considered a ring of impurities, concentric to the nanodisk; and for the case of the domain wall it has been considered two clusters of impurities, identical and equidistant from the nanowire width axis. The found results for the modified nanodisk have shown that it is possible to modulate the gyrotropic frequency that depends strongly on the disk aspect ratio (thickness/diameter). In a disk with the ring of magnetic impurities, a fine tuning of the gyrotropic frequency can be obtained by varying of the ring parameters. Furthermore, it was found that the polarity switching of the vortex core can occur due to the interaction between the vortex core and the ring; the polarity reversing in a disk with a ring requires smaller excitation amplitudes than the disk without the ring does. The found results for the nanowire have indicated that it is possible to control the transverse domain wall position; the wall can be moved from a cluster to the other by simply reversing of the magnetic field direction. The switching of the transverse domain wall polarity was also investigated and the use of this impurity distribution demonstrated to be useful to stabilize the motion wall motion after occurring polarity reversal; thus the changing of the polarity occurs in a fast and reversible way. As an example of the application of this modified nanowire, we propose its use as a cell in a nonvolatile memory device based on 2 bits per cell, in other words, the information can be encoded in the position as well as the polarity of the transverse domain wall. Although the results presented here are for a very simple distribution of magnetic impurities, we believe their consequences can be planned and extended for the design and realization of future devices.