American Institute of Physics, Journal of Applied Physics, 7(111), p. 07D712
DOI: 10.1063/1.3675179
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We investigated the detailed magnetotransport properties of epitaxial Fe/IrMn exchange biased bilayers by angle-dependent anisotropic magnetoresistance measurements over a wide temperature range. Irreversible resistance jumps and smooth transitions are observed when measuring along different angles with respect to the bias at certain temperatures. The angular dependence of the switching fields shows good agreement with a domain wall (DW) nucleation model. The exchange bias, the induced uniaxial anisotropy, and the intrinsic 90° DW nucleation energy are further extracted from the angle-dependent measurements. A linear temperature dependence is observed for both the exchange bias and the induced uniaxial anisotropy, while the intrinsic 90° DW nucleation energy is independent of the temperature.