Polar Magneto-optic Kerr Effect (MOKE)

Magneto-Optic Kerr Effect (MOKE) uses the change in polarization or intensity of the incident polarized light after being reflected from the surface of a magnetic sample to derive magnetic properties. It is a popular technique to study magnetic properties of thin films and multilayers because of several advantages including the sensitivity down to monolayer resolution, high temporal and spatial resolution and its low cost.

The figure shows the room temperature Polar MOKE microscopy, light is illuminated from a green LED source (520 nm- 540 nm), passes through the slit and the polarizer and becomes polarized, incident on the beam splitter and passes through the Objective lense then reflects with the sample surface and passes through the analyzer that converts the change in polarization to change in light intensity which is visible and finally captured by the CCD camera