Magnetic properties of thick synthetic antiferromagnets with different ferromagnetic layers

Synthetic antiferromagnets (SAF) are versatile magnetic structures consisting of two ferromagnetic thin films with antiparallel magnetization, separated by a thin non-magnetic spacer. They are used in modern spintronics as building blocks of spintronic devices for data storage applications, computing, and as magnetic-field sensors. More recently, they have been proposed as media for efficient skyrmions and spin-waves propagation, and for spin-torque oscillators. Tai-loring their properties is therefore of fundamental importance for the development of novel nanomaterials. In this work, the magnetic properties of different types of SAFs are investigated via vibrating sample magnetometry, by changing the thick-ness of the layers. Importantly, while a decrease of the saturation and interlayer exchange coupling field for thicker systems is present, the desired antiferromagnetic coupling at remanence is still robust. These results suggest that by modulating the thickness of the layers, it is possible to finely engineer the SAF magnetic properties even in tens of nm-thick SAFs, enabling a new degree of freedom in the design and development of novel magnetic nanodevices.