TABLE OF CONTENTS This chapter discusses polarization dependent X-ray photoemission electron microscopy (X-PEEM) and its application to coupled magnetic layers, in particular ferromagnet-antiferromagnet structures.
Over the last decades, magnetism has evolved into one of the cornerstones of information storage technology, providing the foundation of a $50 billion dollar per year worldwide storage business. Today's high-tech magnetic devices are based on thin films, often patterned into sub-micron sized cells, and rely on the existence of magnetically well-defined states. Over the last ten years, our understanding of the structure and properties of magnetic thin films and multilayers has progressed remarkably, yet one key problem in our understanding has remained, namely, the characterization and understanding of interfaces, omnipresent in modern magnetic structures. Many of today's forefront areas in magnetism require a better understanding of the spin structure at interfaces [1] , [2]. Examples are giant magne-toresistance structures and spin tunnel junctions [3], as well as "spintronics" devices based on spin injection into a semiconductor [4] , [5]. In these structures, spin transport across metal-metal, metal-oxide, metal-semiconductor, and semiconductor-semiconductor interfaces is believed to strongly depend on the magnetic properties of the interfaces.
Today's magneto-electronic devices typically contain ferro-, ferri-, and antifer-romagnetic layers, and the characterization of their complex structure requires new experimental tools that are sensitive to all three flavors of magnetic order. While there are numerous techniques sensitive to ferromagnetic order in thin-film systems ranging from magnetic force microscopy, over the...
