Magnetic multilayer structures

This is an overview of work at the IBM Almaden Research Center on magnetic multilayer structures comprising one, several, or many magnetic films sandwiched between nonmagnetic films. In recent years there has been increasing interest in such structures because of their novel and potentially useful properties. Recent examples of magnetic multilayer structures grown by molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) and sputtering are described. It is seen that MBE and sputtering are complementary techniques for the preparation of such structures, and that the ability to modify their magnetic properties by suitably designing their architecture is a key to their further development.