Table of Contents
ReMagX
About
ReMagX is a scientific software to calculate and fit the specular x-ray
reflection from a thin film sample taking into account magnetic
contributions. It has been developed during the last years at the
Max-Planck-Institute for Metal Research in Stuttgart, Germany.
The program is able to simulate standard non-magnetic x-ray reflectivity for variable energies based upon the so called Parratt formalism. However, the real aim and strength of ReMagX is the simulation of the reflectivity from a magnetic multilayer under circular polarized x-rays. By calculating the specular reflection of a transition metal sample, e.g. Co/Cu multilayer, at the L-edge of Co and taking into account variations in the reflectivity based upon the XMCD effect a dichroic reflectometry is available.
Motivation
Materials composed of several thin layers, so called multilayers, are of great scientific interest. The reduced dimensionality and/or the existence f many interfaces can lead to novel physical phenomena. Magnetic functional materials and films are of interest for data storage devices such as hard disks, read heads and sensors. X-ray resonant reflectometry (XRR) is the ideal tool to study the depth resolved and element-specific electronic structure of multilayers. Besides of the structural parameters of the thin film like thickness and roughness one is sensitive to the optical constants which includes effects like magnetic profiles, element density profiles, electronic reconstruction and strain effects.
To investigate the magnetism in such systems, a techniqe able to probe the local magnetic moments in an element selective way is desirable. X-ray Magnetic Reflectometry is such a technique. By making use of the x-ray magnetic circular dichroism (XMCD) as additional contrast for standard x-ray reflectivity a method is available to probe chemical and magnetic depth profiles of thin films.
Features
- Three different algorithms for reflectivity calculation (Parratt/Matrix(Zak)/Full Matrix)
- Sample definition either as material-profile or element-profile
- Script language for maximum flexibility
- Parallelized algorithms for best performance
- Reflectivity and tranmission simulation
- Adaptive slicing/layer segmentation module
- Two different methods for optical density calculation
- Processes optical-constant database files for maximum flexibility
- Variable x-ray polarizations
- Magnetism on a per-layer base or by introducing artificial magnetic moments
- Four different fit routines (Simplex, Genetic Algorithm, Levenberg-Marquardt, Simulated Annealing)
- Map calculation module
- Four different numerical precision modes
- Data import modul