Use of the asymmetric planar hall resistance of an Fe film for possible multi-value memory device applications

Systematic planar Hall measurements have been performed on a ferromagnetic Fe film grown on a standard (001) GaAs substrate at room temperature. The angular dependence of the planar Hall effect revealed the presence of both four-fold (cubic) and two-fold (uniaxial) anisotropies in the 7 nm thick Fe film. The dominance of the four-fold symmetric anisotropy, however, provided four magnetic easy axes near the (100) direction, which results in a two step switching phenomenon in the magnetization reversal process. An interesting asymmetric hysteresis loop was observed in the planar Hall resistance (PHR) when the turning point of the field scan is set at the value in the region of the second transition. The intermediate resistance states appearing in the asymmetric PHR loop were understood in terms of mutli-domain structures formed during the second switching of magnetization. Such multi-domain structure of the Fe film showing robust time stability provided additional Hall resistance states, which can be used for multi-valued memory device applications.