Threshold currents to move domain walls in films with perpendicular anisotropy

The authors quantify the impact of the pinning potential on the current driven domain wall depinning process in wires with spin valves having perpendicular magnetic anisotropy. By artificially controlling the strength of the pinning field H-p, the threshold current J(th) is found to decrease when reducing H-p. In addition, the efficiency of the depinning process is observed to correlate with the polarization and the damping parameter of the magnetic layer. This suggests that the engineering of pinning sites together with well suited materials provides a pathway for efficient current-induced domain wall manipulation in films with perpendicular anisotropy. (c) 2007 American Institute of Physics.