Effect of finite magnetic film thickness on Neel coupling in spin valves

Spin valves are widely studied due to their application as magnetoresistive material in magnetic recording heads and other magnetic field sensors. An important film property is the interlayer coupling field (called offset field H-o or ferromagnetic coupling field H-f). It has been shown that the Neel model for orange-peel coupling can be applied successfully to describe this interlayer coupling. The waviness associated with the developing granular structure is thereby taken as the relevant waviness. The original Neel model describes the ferromagnetic magnetostatic interaction between two ferromagnetic layers, of infinite thickness, separated by a nonmagnetic spacer with a correlated interface waviness. In this article, this physical picture is refined to account for the effect of the finite thickness of the magnetic films in a spin valve. Magnetic poles created at the outer surfaces of the magnetic layers result in an antiferromagnetic interaction with the poles at the inner surface of the opposite layer. A simple model is presented for the different interactions in a top spin valve (columnar structure with cumulative waviness on a flat substrate! and for a bottom spin valve (columnar structure with conformal waviness on a way substrate). Comparison to experimental data, shows that the free and pinned layer thickness dependence can be understood from this refined picture. (C) 1999 American Institute of Physics. [S0021-8979(99)18808-X].