Mechanism of Ripple Formation in Thin Films

Abstract

To test the hypothesis that magnetization ripple in thin films is due to the randomly oriented magnetocrystalline anisotropies of the individual crystallites, highly oriented iron films have been made which exhibit a marked decrease in ripple intensity. Changes in ripple intensity, produced by applying mechanical stresses so as to vary the resultant uniaxial anisotropy constant of a given sample, are consistent with the model of variations of the local easy axis direction as responsible for the formation of magnetization ripple.