Imaging antiferromagnetic domains at surfaces and interfaces using dichroism XPEEM

Summary form only given. With magnetic storage devices becoming more and more sophistic over the last decade, a drastic increase in storage density was made possible. For example a combination of non-magnetic, ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic layers is used in today´s highly sensitive hard disk read heads. These are capable of separating and reading the magnetic information stored in up to 100 billion magnetic bits per square inch. While in all these devices the coupling between the antiferromagnet and the ferromagnetic layer plays an important role, our scientific knowledge about their interface is still poor. This is attributed to the lack of experimental methods to characterize the antiferromagnetic structure at surfaces and/or interfaces. Here, the ability of dichroism x-ray absorption spectromicroscopy using a photoemission electron microscope (PEEM) to characterize the antiferromagnetic order of bare surfaces or buried interfaces will be discussed.