Domain wall injection and propagation in planar Permalloy nanowires

We have used high-sensitivity magneto-optics to study the magnetic switching of a single 20 mum long, 100 nm wide, 5 nm thick planar Permalloy wire made by focused ion beam milling. It is found that the switching field of the wire can be dramatically reduced by the addition of a large end pad to the wire, which serves as a domain wall injector. We show that once injected, the domain wall is able to move very freely along the wire. No measurable pinning of the domain wall was observed at a shallow kink in the middle of the length of the wire. We thus show that such wires can be considered as domain wall conduits, with many applications in magnetoelectronic devices. (C) 2002 American Institute of Physics.