Anisotropic bimodal distribution of blocking temperature with multiferroic BiFeO3 epitaxial thin films

Controlling BiFeO3 (BFO)/ferromagnet (FM) interfacial coupling appears crucial for electrical control of spintronic devices using this multiferroic. Here, we analyse the magnetic behaviour of exchange-biased epitaxial-BiFeO3/FM bilayers with in-plane or out-of-plane magnetic anisotropies. We report bimodal distributions of blocking temperatures similar to those of polycrystalline-antiferromagnet (AF)/FM bilayers. The high-temperature contribution depends on the FM anisotropy direction and is likely related to thermally activated depinning of domain walls in the BiFeO3 single crystal film as opposed to thermally activated reversal of spins in AF grains for polycrystalline AF. In contrast, the low-temperature contribution weakly depends on the anisotropy direction, consistent with a spin-glass origin. (C) 2012 American Institute of Physics. [doi:10.1063/1.3684812]