Magnetic multilayers constitute a rich class of material systems with a number of precisely tunable parameters (e.g., layer thickness and repeat number) that determine both their magnetic and electronic properties 1. We present a comprehensive characterization of structural and magnetic properties of the novel system Pt/Co/Mn, which extends the group of Pt/Co/X (X = metal) multilayers that have been investigated thus far. The structural properties of the sputter-deposited Pt/Co/Mn stacks were determined from X-ray reflectometry and scanning transmission electron microscopy experiments. Subsequently, we performed magnetometry measurements in order to study hysteresis loops as a function of varying layer thickness values. We demonstrate that an increasing Co layer thickness changes the magnetic anisotropy from out of plane to in plane, whereas the deposition of thicker Mn layers leads to a decrease in the saturation magnetization, see Fig. 1. Temperature-dependent magnetometry measurements reinforce the hypothesis of antiferromagnetic coupling at the Co/Mn interfaces being responsible for the observed Mn thickness dependence of the magnetization reversal. Moreover, magneto-optical imaging experiments indicate systematic changes in magnetic domain patterns as a function of the Co and Mn layer thickness and suggest the existence of bubblelike domains—potentially even magnetic skyrmions—in the case of sufficiently thick Mn layers, which are expected to contribute to a sizable Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction in the multilayer stacks. We identify Pt/Co/Mn as a highly complex multilayer system with strong potential for further fundamental studies and possible applications 2.

This work is supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) through the research fellowship LO 2584/1-1, the NSF through I-MRSEC Grant No. DMR-1720633 and US DOE, Office of Science, MSED under Contract No. DE-SC002260.