Creep in Thin Magnetic Films†

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Abstract
‘ Creep ’ is the name given to the apparent lowering of the magnetic coorcivity of thin magnetic films in certain pulsed fiold conditions. The theory of creep has been discussod elsewhcre (Beeforth and Hulyer 1963 BEEFORTH , T. H. , and HULYER , P. J. , 1963 , Nature, Lond. , 199 , 793 . [Google Scholar] , Green et al. 1964, Middlehoek 1962); the work reported here aims at examining the practical implications for thin film computer stores. It is shown that a hard direction pulse field is necessary before creep can occur, and the significant features of the pulse field are found to be the amplitude, the rates of rise and fall of the pulse edge, and the total number of pulses involved. So far as the films themselves are concerned, creep is affected by differences in film thickness and also film composition. One application of thin magnetic films is in high speed computer storage. It is shown that creep limits the maximum storage density, but that correct operation of a carefully designed store should always be possible.

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