American Institute of Physics, Applied Physics Letters, 21(98), p. 212508
DOI: 10.1063/1.3595274
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NiO/Ag/CoO/Fe single crystalline films are grown epitaxially on a vicinal Ag(001) substrate using molecular beam epitaxy and investigated by photoemission electron microscopy. We find that after zero-field cooling, the in-plane Fe magnetization switches from parallel to perpendicular direction of the atomic steps of the vicinal surface at thinner CoO thickness but remains in its original direction parallel to the steps at thicker CoO thickness. CoO and NiO domain imaging result shows that both CoO/Fe and NiO/CoO spins are perpendicularly coupled, suggesting that the Fe magnetization switching may be associated with the rotatable-frozen spin transition of the CoO film.