Micromagnetic simulation of Sm-Co/α-Fe/Sm-Co trilayers with various angles between easy axes and the film plane

Hysteresis loops and energy products have been calculated systematically by a three-dimensional (3D) software OOMMF for Sm-Co/alpha-Fe/Sm-Co trilayers with various thicknesses and beta, where beta is the angle between the easy axis and the field applied perpendicular to the film plane. It is found that trilayers with a perpendicular anisotropy possess considerably larger coercivities and smaller remanences and energy products compared with those with an in-plane anisotropy. Increase of beta leads to a fast decrease of the maximum energy product as well as the drop of both remanence and coercivity. Such a drop is much faster than that in the single-phased hard material, which can explain the significant discrepancy between the experiment and the theoretical energy products. Some modeling techniques have been utilized with spin check procedures performed, which yield results in good agreement with the one-dimensional (1D) analytical and experimental data, justifying our calculations. Further, the calculated nucleation fields according to the 3D calculations are larger than those based on the 1D model, whereas the corresponding coercivity is smaller, leading to more square hysteresis loops and better agreement between experimental data and the theory.