JOURNAL OF APPLIED PHYSICS 103, 07F519 2008

Contribution of the shrunk interface and the convex surface of grains on

magnetic behavior in granular film
Jehyun Lee,1,2 Dieter Suess,2 Thomas Schrefl,3 Kyu Hwan Oh,1 and Josef Fidler2,a
1

Materials Science and Engineering, Seoul National University, 151742 Seoul, Republic of Korea
Institute of Solid State Physics, Vienna University of Technology, Wiedner Hauptstrae 8-10,
A-1040 Vienna, Austria
3
Department of Engineering Materials, University of Sheffield, Western Bank, S1 3JD Sheffield,
United Kingdom
2

Presented on 6 November 2007; received 11 September 2007; accepted 25 October 2007;

published online 7 February 2008
In this paper, we studied the intergranular interaction in realistically shaped grains which have
convex vacuum surface. The convex surface is evaluated by utilizing the SURFACE EVOLVER, a
software package for grain growth simulation. Various shapes of grains are obtained by changing the
wetting angles between the top surface and the grain boundaries. From finite element micromagnetic
simulations, which are used to simulate the magnetization reversal in the simple granular structure,
it is found that the exchange field decreases with increasing wetting angle. We studied the effect of
the intergranular exchange and the magnetostatic interactions individually. In order to study the
intergranular exchange coupling effect quantitatively, an analytic energy surface model for the
exchange coupled system is developed. The results agree very well with those of micromagnetic
simulation. Magnetostatic interactions reduce the exchange field by making the antiparallel state
more favorable than the parallel.
2008 American Institute of Physics. DOI: 10.1063/1.2833302
Perpendicular recording is the most popular and promising technique to enhance recording performance and recording density. High out-of-plane anisotropy for thermal stability, small size grains for sharp bit transition, low coercivity
for small recording head field are required for high recording
density over 1 Tb in.2.13 Exchange spring media are a promising candidate for an advanced recording media, composed
of exchange coupled soft and hard magnets.4 In the granular
structure, each grain behaves like a single bit which is exchange coupled to its nearest neighbor grains and magnetostatically interacts with all grains of the film. These interactions are affected by the geometric factor of grain shape, for
example, interfacial area, grain volume, and grain shape. A
granular structure having a crystalline grain in a columnar
structure and nonmagnetic material surrounding it. In the
structure, the top surface of the grains has convex shape
resulted from the competition between the surface tensions
of vacuum surface and intergranular materials around the
grains.5,6 The convex shape is supposed to have potential
role in magnetic behaviors, however, in micromagnetic simulation, the convex shape is usually neglected for simplicity.7
Therefore, in order to understand the magnetization behavior
precisely, we need to investigate the effect of the shrunk
interface and the evolved convex surface in intergranular
coupled structure. The granular system is simplified to make
the quantitative study easier. In this paper, we prepared
simple systems with equal grain shape, boundary thickness,
and same material. Realistic shape grain models and granular
structure with convex surface are prepared by surface energy
minimization and copying itself, respectively.
a

Author to whom correspondence should be addressed. Electronic mail:

josef.fidler@tuwien.ac.at.

0021-8979/2008/1037/07F519/3/$23.00

We performed micromagnetic simulations to observe the

effect of the convex top surface and analyzed the results
theoretically.
Brakkes SURFACE EVOLVER has been applied to grain
growth and coarsening of foam.8,9 It was used to model the
grain shapes in three dimensions 3Ds. The surface is made
up of the basic geometric elements: vertices, edges, and facets. A surface has a total energy proportional to its area that
arises from surface tension. The program causes the surface
to evolve toward minimal energy by a gradient-descent
method. The gradient of energy at a vertex is a force that is
converted to a vector for the vertex motion.10 The topological change of surface is represented by the creation and annihilation of edges and vertices. The program eliminates
edges which shrink shorter than a minimum length lmin
= 0.14 nm and divide edges which lengthen longer than a
maximum length lmax = 1 nm, then modifies the topology of
the finite element mesh. This procedure was necessary to
avoid technical difficulties posed by topological changes. In
our 3D simulation, the initial structure is a cube of which
edge length L = 5 nm, with grain boundary thickness t
= 1 nm. In the evolution process, a shape of a grain was
evolved under constant volume constraint V = 125 nm3 with
fixed bottom face. The finite elements on sidewalls are not
permitted to move toward the normal direction of the wall,
describing the fixed in-plane grain shape and size controlled
by intergranular materials or seed layer. The wetting angle
between the vacuum surface and grain boundary is varied
from 60 to 150. Figure 1a shows the stabilized shapes of
the single grains. They have concave or convex vacuum surface except for the case of = 90, of which final shape is
same to its initial state. As the wetting angle increases, the
curvature of the convex is increasing so that the corner of the

103, 07F519-1

2008 American Institute of Physics

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07F519-2

J. Appl. Phys. 103, 07F519 2008

Lee et al.

FIG. 2. Color online a Coercivity and b exchange field of the granular

structure as a function of wetting angle, result from the micromagnetic
simulation with magnetostatic field on filled circle and off empty circle.

FIG. 1. Color online a Three-dimensional grain shape evolution with

various wetting angles. The dark face is the top surface of the initial shape.
The attached numbers are the wetting angle of the grain. b Simple granular
structure composed of five grains.

top surface of the grain expands downward while the center

arises vertically. The granular structure is prepared by copying the grain shapes, and finite element mesh for micromagnetic simulation is generated, as shown in Fig. 1b.
The material parameters are set according to those of
FePt L10, one of the promising candidates for recording media due to its high out-of-plane uniaxial anisotropy. The material parameters are adopted from the Ref. 11 as follows:
uniaxial anisotropy constant KU = 6.6 106 J / m3, saturation
magnetization M S = 1.14 106 A / m, intragrain exchange
constant A = 1.02 1011 J / m, and the intergranular exchange Aint = 5 1013, assumed to be 5% of the intragrain
exchange coefficient.12 We compared the magnetic behaviors
of single isolated hard magnet grain, in order to investigate
the role of the intergranular interactions by comparison with
the result from the granular structure model. In single grain
model, the magnetic characteristics with the convex surfaces
are similar to those of the cubic grains. From the results, it is
shown that the convex surface does not play a dominant role
without intergranular interaction. The dynamic coercivities
of all models are exactly same as 12.1 T, which is a little
higher than analytic value 0Hc = 2KU / M S = 11.6 T. For very
slow sweep rate of the external field and a damping constant
of = 1, the numerically calculated coercive field approaches
the analytic result. In given single grains, the magnetization
was reversed by coherent rotation. Secondly, we performed
the micromagnetics, simulation with simple granular structure consisted of center grain and surrounding four grains.
For easier analysis of magnetization behavior, the uniaxial
anisotropy of surrounding grains are set 104 times higher
than that of the center grain to prevent to be reversed. In
stable states without the external field, the magnetization of
the center grain can be aligned parallel or antiparallel to its
surrounding grains. Let us call the former P parallel state
and the latter AP antiparallel state. Figure 2 shows the micromagnetic simulation results obtained from the granular
structure as a function of wetting angle. Their coercivity is
increasing and exchange field is decreasing as the wetting
angle increases. They are getting close to the values of single
grain, that means the intergrain exchange coupling strength
is becoming weaker. The reduction of the exchange field is
quite outstanding. In the presence of the magnetostatic field,
the exchange field is increased by 1.5 T and the coercivity is

decreased by 0.28 T, as the wetting angle changes from

= 150 to 90; they correspond to 30% and 2.4%, respectively.
For the quantitative study of the intergranular exchange
effects on the exchange field reduction according to the wetting angles, an analytic approach is employed. We set up two
atomic-scaled exchange coupled single domain cube particles with uniaxial anisotropy aligned in the perpendicular
direction. The relatively soft magnet is coupled to a very
hard magnet of which magnetization is fixed by a large magnetocrystalline anisotropy. We will look at the effective field
acting on the relatively soft cube. The total energy, consisting
of the uniaxial anisotropy energy, Zeeman energy, and intergranular exchange energy with neglecting the magnetostatic
energy and intragrain exchange energy is
Etot = Eani + EZeeman + Eint

exchange =

VM SH cos0

VKU sin2

FAint
cos ,
a

where F is the interfacial area, Aint is the intergranular exchange constant, a is the lattice constant, is the angle between the uniaxial axis and magnetization, 0 is the angle
between the uniaxial axis and field applying direction.12
From the first and second derivatives of Eq. 1, the critical
switching fields are derived. By using the reduced applied
field h = M S / 2KUH, we arrive at the field components perpendicular and parallel to the easy axis,
h = h sin 0 = sin3 ,
h// = h cos 0 = cos3

2
FAint
.
2aVKU

Equations 2 and 3 turn out to be the shifted asteroid

shown in Fig. 3, which is exactly same to the StonerWohlfarth equation when the intergranular exchange constant Aint or interfacial area F is 0, that means the neighbor
grains are totally exchange decoupled. From Eqs. 2 and 3,
the coercivity is expected to be remained as that of a single
grain, when the external field is applied parallel to the easy
axis on the given system. Only the exchange field
FAint / 2aVKU is added, which is linearly proportional to the
product of the interface area and the intergranular exchange
constant, and inversely proportional to the anisotropy energy.
To verify Eqs. 2 and 3, micromagnetic simulations are
performed in atomic scale, L = 0.2 nm and t = 0.1 nm, with a
damping constant = 1. Figure 4 shows the comparison results from the two verification tests. One is increasing the

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07F519-3

J. Appl. Phys. 103, 07F519 2008

Lee et al.

FIG. 5. Color online a Interfacial area of the center grain, as a function

of the wetting angle. The attached pictures are the interface shape of each
model, respectively. b Comparison between the analytically expected exchange field from the interfacial area and the FEM simulation results.

FIG. 3. Color online Switching field of an intergranular exchange coupled

system dashed on coordinates h and h, with the Stoner-Wohlfarth asteroid solid. The external field applying angle is noted as 0.

intergranular strength by adding the neighbor hard magnet

grain one by one Fig. 4a. Each hard magnet increases the
exchange strength of 25.48 mJ/ m2, resulted from the intergranular exchange coefficient shown in the previous chapter;
and the other is varying the field applying angle on the bicubic system Fig. 4b, a relatively soft magnet with one very
hard magnet. In the figure, the analytic solutions are in very
good agreement with the FEM micromagnetics results. Similar
approach
has
been
tried
by
Gao
and
FernandezdeCastro13 in exchange spring system.
From the analytic equation, it is found that the interfacial
area determines the exchange strength if the other magnetic
parameters are same. Back to the grain shape evolution, the
interfacial area and the vacuum surface area are changing
according to the competition of the surface tensions due to
the energy minimization. The higher wetting angle results
from the lower vacuum surface energy and the higher interface energy, therefore the interfaces of the grains with higher
wetting angle have smaller interfacial area Fig. 5a. Consequently, it can be postulated that the degradation of exchange field when 90 is because of the contraction of
the interfacial area. This hypothesis is supported from the
coincidence between the analytic results developed from the
interfacial area of finite element meshes and Eq. 3, with the
micromagnetic simulation results of the granular structure
without magnetostatic interaction, shown in Fig. 5b. For all
wetting angles, the analytical model overestimates the FEM
results, because the reversal mode is nonuniform even at this

FIG. 4. Color online Verification of Eq. 2 in atomic scale by varying

intergranular exchange strength a, and varying the external field applying
angle b. The analytic results are shown as lines and the micromagnetic
simulation results are marked as dots.

small size due to the intergrain exchange. In comparison between the micromagnetic simulation results from with and
without the magnetostatic field, it is shown in Fig. 2b that
the magnetostatic field decreases the exchange field. The
presence of the magnetostatic energy always makes the AP
state more stable than the P state, by compensating the stray
fields.
Utilizing the micromagnetic simulation combined with
the SURFACE EVOLVER, we studied the effect of the convex
shape of grains on magnetic behavior. From the finite element models generated by the SURFACE EVOLVER, it is found
that the convex vacuum surface decreases the interfacial area
of grains. It is found that the reduced interfacial area makes
the intergranular exchange strength weaker, proved by the
finite element micromagnetic simulations and analytic explanation in atomic scale. In a realistic scale model there was a
little deviations from the analytic result due to the local incoherency, from the intergranular exchange coupling. As a
result of the interactions, the exchange field decreases in the
grain models with vacuum surface of smaller curvature radius.
I appreciate Tae-Young Kim, of the Storage System Division, Samsung Electronics for the discussion about using
the SURFACE EVOLVER.
This work was performed by the international collaboration between Seoul National University, and Vienna University of Technology, supported by the Korean Science Foundation KOSEF, Project No. F01-2007-000-10167-0 and the
Austrian Science Foundation FWF, Project No. P19350N16.
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