On Some Properties and Applications of Patterned Ferromagnetic Thin Films

Abstract: A microwave reflection method has been used to measure the spin excitations corresponding to the translational mode of magnetic vortices in samples containing either one or two vortices. Experimental findings are complemented by micromagnetic simulations.One-vortex systems are investigated in micron-sized circular and elliptical cylinders. For ellipses, the resonance frequency can effectively be tuned by applying static magnetic fields and the field dependence of the frequency is significant for fields applied along the short axes but negligible when applied along the long axes of the ellipses. This is contrary to the circular case, where virtually no field dependence was found. This can be understood by considering the shape of the vortex potential well. Further, it is found that the resonance frequency is independent on the direction of the excitation field for the one-vortex systems.Ellipses containing two interacting vortices are also investigated. It is shown that the relative vortex core polarizations dominate the vortex translational mode and cause, in the case of opposite polarizations, a dependence on the excitation field direction. For parallel core polarizations, no dependence on the excitation field direction is found. The dependence of the resonance frequencies on applied static fields along the long and short axes are also experimentally mapped out and compared with micromagnetic simulations, where the possible eigenmodes are determined.Another section of the thesis introduces the dawning of a device based on patterned magnetic elliptical elements for the manipulation and movement of magnetic particles on a surface. The controlled movement and separation of individual particles are successfully demonstrated.Contributions to micromagnetic standard problems and simulations on magnetization switching in nanoscale particles have also been performed. The standard problems highlight some important aspects of choosing the discretization cell sizes and the finite temperature simulations show that thermal fluctuations can alter the magnetization reversal paths.