Stripe stabilization in vertical Bloch line memory

Abstract

Partially grooved, long, rectangular grooves on the garnet surface were used to stabilize minor loop stripes in a vertical Bloch line memory. These stripes reside beneath the stripe confinement groove. The test chip contained 10 or 20 minor loop grooves, 10 read/write (r/w) gate grooves, and a major line groove. The film thickness was 4.76 μm, and the groove was 0.5 μm deep. Each minor loop groove was 500 μm long, four widths were tried: 3.5, 4, 4.5, and 5 μm. Two groove periods were tried: 10 and 20 μm. For stripe initialization, a bubble was nucleated in every minor loop groove by a single current pulse at a 90 Oe bias field. As the bias field was decreased slowly, bubbles began to stripe out at 80 Oe. At 75 Oe, all 10 stripes were stretched to the full groove length. These stripes were stable at bias fields between 70 and 80 Oe. Stripes decreased in length at higher fields, and escaped from the confinement groove at low fields. When stripes escaped from the groove, it always occured from the end not facing a r/w gate groove. These bias field values and the stripe-escape asymmetry are confirmed by computer simulation.