Enhanced imaging of magnetic structures in micropatterned arrays of Co dots and antidots

A specific technique of numerical treatment of atomic force microscopy (AFM) and magnetic force microscopy (MFM) signal has been developed to enhance the quality of raw images, in order both to improve their contrast and to gain better insight on the sample topography and on the local arrangement of the magnetisation vector. Basically, the technique consists in computing the optimum conformal transformation that allows one to superimpose two AFM images of the same area, acquired performing subsequent scans whose fast scan axis were mutually perpendicular, and applying the inverse transform to the second image. After MFM image superposition, the two datasets were either summed or subtracted, in order to improve the magnetic contrast. Computations have been done in a Matlab^® workspace with the help of Image Processing Toolbox 4.2. Improved MFM images obtained on both dots and antidots thin evaporated Co arrays in the demagnetised state (after performing alternate field demagnetisation parallel and perpendicular to the array plane) have been interpreted. Samples consisting of large-size patterns (1×1 mm) of circular dots/antidots with square/hexagonal lattices and minimum diameters of 1 μm were prepared by optical lithography. The magnetic film thickness was chosen depending on resist thickness, and varied between 25 and 150 nm, with a fixed ratio 1:4 between metal/resist film thickness. MFM was exploited to obtain images of either intra-dot or inter-antidot magnetic structures.