attoAFM/CFM
Nanoscale Imaging and Control of Domain-Wall Hopping
Domain walls in magnetic wires may prove useful for future spintronic devices, and hence
their nanoscale characterization is an important steps towards useful applications. As
demonstrated by the group of Vincent Jaques in Science, their NV center microscope based
on the attoAFM/CFM allows to image domain walls in a 1 nm thick ferromagnetic nanowire
with high resolution as well as jumps between pinning sites of individual domain walls.
At the same time, they showed that the domain walls can be moved along the wire by in-
ducing jumps via local heating due to a high local laser power. Since the domain walls are
pinned by nearest pinning site, this allows to probe and image the pinning landscape of
the sample quite efficiently.
Images courtesy of V. Jacques, University of Montpellier, FR; for more details, see Tetienne et al ., “Nanoscale imaging and control of
domain-wall hopping with a NV center microscope”, Science 344, 1366(2014)
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