Effects of surface and interface scattering on anomalous Hall effect in Co/Pd multilayers

In this paper, we report the results of surface and interface scattering on anomalous Hall effect in Co/Pd multilayers with perpendicular magnetic anisotropy. The surface scattering effect has been extracted from the total anomalous Hall effect. By scaling surface scattering contribution with ρ AHs∼ρssγ, the exponent γ has been found to decrease with the increase of surface scattering resistivity, which could account for the thickness-dependent anomalous Hall effect. Interface diffusion induced by rapid thermal annealing modifies not only the magnetization and longitudinal resistivity but also the anomalous Hall effect; a large exponent γ ∼ 5.7 has been attributed to interface scattering-dominated anomalous Hall effect. © 2012 American Physical Society.