Direct observation of dendritic domain growth in perpendicular magnetic anisotropy CoFe/Pt multilayers

Abstract We present the experimental results on thermally activated magnetization reversal for [Co 0.9 Fe 0.1 (5.0 A)/Pt(20 A)] 4 multilayer. Direct domain observations show that magnetization reversal is initiated with rare nucleation and followed by dendritic growth of domain walls. Based on macroscopic magnetic parameters from experimental data, the dendritic domain growth mode is qualitatively interpreted by Monte Carlo simulations in terms of a simple uniaxial magnetic anisotropy model. Moreover, both time evolution of domain growth observation and magnetic relaxation measurements reveal that CoFe/Pt multilayer has a relatively large activation volume compared with Co/Pt multilayers.