Partial grooving in vertical Bloch line memory

Partially grooved regions in magnetic garnets, used to stabilize minor-loop stripe domains in vertical Bloch line memories have been investigated using arrays of grooves in garnets with a zero-field stripe-width of 2.36 μm and thickness of 2.26 μm. Rectangular grooved regions were used to confine the minor loop stripes, using a groove depth of 10% and groove widths of 1.5 μm and 2.00 μm. Major line regions were defined by two successive 10% grooving steps. Bias field margins were measured experimentally and computed using a two-dimensional, magnetic-domain computer simulation. The computed margins were shown to be in quantitative agreement with experimentally measured bias field margins. Interpretation of the simulations and the experimental data in these samples indicates that magnetostatic effects dominate magnetostrictive effects in defining bias field stability