Introduction and pinning of domain walls in 50 nm NiFe constrictions using local and external magnetic fields

•Magnetic domain wall introduction and pinning in Permalloy nanowires with 50 nm wide constrictions.•Magnetic domain nucleation at zero external applied field.•Bimodal distribution of the domain wall configuration in the constriction.

We study domain wall injection in 100 nm wide NiFe nanowires, followed by domain wall propagation and pinning on 50 nm wide constrictions. The injection is performed using local and external magnetic fields. Using several nucleation pad geometries, we show that at these small dimensions the use of an external field only does not allow obtaining a reproducible injection/pinning process. However, the use of an additional local field, created by an Oersted line, allows to nucleate a reversed domain at zero external applied field. Then, an external field of 5 mT enables the domain wall to propagate far from the Oersted line, and the pinning occurs reproducibly. We also show that notwithstanding the reproducibility of the pinning process, the depinning field is found to be stochastic, following a bimodal distribution. Using micromagnetic simulation we link two different DW configurations, vortex and transverse, to the two typical depinning fields.