Affecting the magnetochemistry of cobalt/gold thin films with organic solvents

We show the ability to measure the influence of a number of organic solvents on the magnetic properties of cobalt and colbalt-gold thin films by employing a custom, lithographically patterned planar Hall effect sensor. The magnitude of the observed shift in maximal Hall voltage varies with solvent functional group, scaling with the expected degree of deprotonization. By developing a novel measurement system, we are able to perform all experiments under standard conditions and apply the solvent without moving the sample out of the instrument, which eliminates a significant amount of error compared to previous measurements.