Micromagnetism in mesoscopic epitaxial Fe dot arrays

The domain structures of epitaxial Fe (20 nm)/GaAs(100) circular dot arrays (diameters from 50 to 1 µm) were studied with magnetic force microscopy. A transition from a single domain to a multidomain remanent state was observed upon reducing the dot diameter beneath 10 µm in dot arrays with the separation twice the dot diameter. When the separation is reduced to half the dot diameter, the single domain states were found to "collapse" into stripe-like multidomain states due to local dipole coupling between dots. Micromagnetic simulations further suggest that for ultrathin Fe dots of less than about 2 nm thickness the diameter does not have a significant influence on the domain structures due to a dramatic reduction of the dipole energy. © 2000 American Institute of Physics.