  Hard/soft magnetic bilayer thin films have been widely used in data storage
technologies and permanent magnet applications. The magnetic configuration and
response to temperatures and magnetic fields in these heterostructures are
considered to be highly dependent on the interfacial coupling. However, the
intrinsic properties of each of the layers, such as the saturation
magnetization and layer thickness, also strongly influence the magnetic
configuration. Changing these parameters provides an effective method to tailor
magnetic properties in composite magnets. Here, we use polarized neutron
reflectometry (PNR) to experimentally probe the interfacial magnetic
configurations in hard/soft bilayer thin films: L10-FePt/A1-FePt, [Co/Pd]
/CoPd, [Co/Pt] /FeNi and L10-FePt/Fe, which all have a perpendicular magnetic
anisotropy in the hard layer. These films were designed with different soft and
hard layer thicknesses (t_soft and t_hard) and saturation magnetization
(M_s^soft and M_s^hard), respectively. The influences of an in-plane magnetic
field (H_ip) and temperature (T) are also studied using a L10 FePt/A1-FePt
bilayer sample. Comparing the PNR results to micromagnetic simulations reveals
that the interfacial magnetic configuration is highly dependent on t_soft,
M_s^soft and the external factors (H_ip and T), and has a relatively weak
dependence on t_hard and M_s^hard. Key among these results, for thin t_soft,
the hard and soft layers are rigidly coupled in the out-of-plane direction,
then undergo a transition to relax in-plane. This transition can be delayed to
larger t_soft by decreasing M_s^soft. Understanding the influence of these
parameters on the magnetic configuration is critical to designing functional
composite magnets for applications.

Materials Science