Planar Hall effect in NiFe/NiMn bilayers

The exchange anisotropy in NiFe/NiMn bilayers was studied by using the planar Hall effect. The sputtered NiFe/NiMn films were patterned into strips of 1 mm in length and 200 μm in width and with six terminals for anisotropy magnetoresistance and planar Hall voltage measurements by a photolithographic process. It is shown that the planar Hall effect is an effective method to characterize the exchange anisotropy in ferromagnetic/antiferromagnetic (AF) systems. It can be used to accurately determine the exchange field and describe the magnetization reversal processes. The effective uniaxial anisotropy field HK eff, the effective unidirectional anisotropy field Hud, and AF domain wall energy Hw can be obtained by fitting the experimental results. We found that in the NiFe/NiMn bilayer system, the parameters HK eff, Hud, and Hw have the same values in reversible and irreversible measurements, and the domain wall energy in AF layer is larger than interfacial unidirectional anisotropy.