Thermal-history-dependent magnetization behaviour in Cr/Cu multilayers

Abstract

The variation in the d.c. magnetic susceptibility for periodic and quasiperiodic antiferromagnetichon-magnetic Cr/Cu multilayers has been investigated in the temperature range 10–300 K. The compositionally quasiperiodic multilayers were made using the Fibonacci series. The temperature dependence of magnetization was found to exhibit hysteretic behaviour at low temperatures in both types of multilayers. The irreversible-to-reversible transition temperature T_tr of the quasiperiodic layers was about 1.6T _tr of the periodic layers. The hysteretic behaviour of the magnetization is similar to that observed in Fe-rare-earth amorphous alloys where the paramagnetic-to-spin-glass phase transition takes place owing to freezing of the spin components at two different temperatures.