A NOVEL METHOD FOR TIME-RESOLVED CHARACTERIZATION OF MICROMAGNETIC STRAY FIELDS WITH SCANNING PROBE MICROSCOPY

Scanning probe microscopy is opening new applications in magnetic engi neering due to superior resolution limits without any sample preparati on under ambient conditions. In this paper Ne report time-resolved mag netic stray field measurements based on a new type of probe to charact erize magnetic fields. The probe used was a magnetoresistive probe hea d fastened to a scanning probe microscope. The characteristics of the novel method are checked out on different test structures. In our expe rimental set-up we have shown the ability of the novel method to chara cterize time-dependent magnetic stray fields with micrometre spatial r esolution and microtesla magnetic field resolution with kilohertz band width. The experimental results reported are waveform measurements on distinct testpoints (zero-dimensional), linescans (one-dimensional) an d two-dimensional stray held distributions. Applications in three-dime nsional measurements are discussed. (C) 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd .