Phys. Rev. B 60, 477–484 (1999)Evidence for a short spin diffusion length in permalloy from the giant magnetoresistance of multilayered nanowiresReceived 15 December 1997; revised 3 April 1998; published in the issue dated 1 July 1999 We present magnetization and giant magnetoresistance (GMR) measurements performed on two series of electrodeposited Py/Cu multilayered nanowires (Py=Ni80Fe20) of diameter φ=90 nm. The multilayers of the first series are composed of a conventional stacking of Py and Cu layers and the GMR is studied as a function of the Cu thickness for a constant Py thickness. The multilayers of the second series are composed of Py/Cu/Py trilayers uniformly distributed along the filament and separated from each other by thick Cu layers. For this second series, magnetic and GMR properties were investigated as a function of the Py layer thickness and our magnetization measurements demonstrate that, for Py layers thinner than about 90 nm, the magnetic moments of the two Py layers of a trilayer are approximately antiparallel at zero field. Analysis of the GMR data using the Valet-Fert model allows us to estimate that the spin diffusion length in Py, lsf(Py), is between 3.3 and 5.3 nm. © 1999 The American Physical Society URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevB.60.477
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevB.60.477
PACS:
75.70.-i, 72.15.Gd
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