Planar and cylindrical Co thin films have been obtained by pulsed laser ablation. X-ray diffractograms have shown no crystalline structure for the as-deposited samples, while the 450 °C annealed samples exhibit Co fcc crystalline peaks. The Scanning Tunnelling Microscopy has revealed a small increase of the surface roughness for the annealed films. The Hall effect has been used to determine the value of the spontaneous magnetization, Ms, at room temperature; Ms ≈ 14 kgauss for the as-deposited sample and Ms ≈ 17.6 kgauss for the 450 °C annealed sample. From transverse magnetooptic Kerr effect, it has been found that the as-deposited samples exhibit magnetic bistability, with a coercive field, Hc, °C. Besides, it has been observed an increase of H, up to ≈ 50 Oe, when the annealing temperature increases. The vibrating sample magnetometry has confirmed these results, showing that the magnetization participating in the magnetooptic effect for these low fields is the total spontaneous magnetization of these samples. Moreover, the cylindrical films exhibit magnetoelastic behavior when they are subjected to angular deformation. It has been found that the saturation magnetostriction constant is negative.

Barium ferrite thin films with excellent perpendicular c-axis orientation were successfully fabricated on Si substrate without any buffer layer. To compensate for possible barium deficiency due to the inter-diffusion between films and substrate, a barium-rich target was used. For a 900 Å-thick film, the perpendicular remanent squareness is about 0.9, while the in-plane remanent squareness is about 0.3. The saturation magnetization (Ms) is about 220 emu/cc, while the coercivity is around 3500 Oe. X-ray diffraction (XRD) results show the (001) perpendicular c-axis texture in the films. It was also found that the rapid thermal annealing conditions greatly affect the magnetic properties of barium ferrite films. With a certain flow rate of oxygen gas in the rapid thermal annealer (RTA), barium ferrite films generally crystallize with good perpendicular c-axis texture. Without oxygen gas, the hexagonal barium ferrite phase fails to develop; instead spinel Fe3O4 phase forms. The reason for the collapsing of hexagonal barium ferrite texture is thought to be an oxygen deficiency in the barium ferrite films due to the reduction of oxygen in the films during the high temperature annealing.

The growth of FexNy thin films on GaAs, In0.2Ga0.8As, and SiO2/Si substrates using an ultra high-vacuum (UHV) deposition chamber equipped with electron cyclotron resonance (ECR) microwave plasma source is presented. The structural properties of the deposited films have been measured using various techniques as x-ray diffraction (XRD), Auger electron spectroscopy (AES), and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The results of XRD measurements show that the films consist of a combination of α-Fe, α'-Fe, y-Fe4N, and α”- Fe16N2 phases. The depth profiles, calculated from the Auger peak intensities, show a uniform nitrogen concentration through the films. The TEM reveals a columnar structure of these films. The properties of the different Fe-N layers have been exploited in the fabrication of Fe(N) / FexNy / Fe trilayer structures, where Fe(N) means a slightly nitrogen doped Fe film. The magneto-transport properties of this trilayer structure grown on In0.2Ga0.8As substrates are presented.

The amorphous state of ferromagnetic Fe78Si9B13 (Metglas 2605S-2) and itsnanocrystallization were investigated by in situ transmission electron microscope (TEM), Xraydiffraction (XRD), Mossbauer spectroscopy (MS), differential scanning calorimeters(DSC) and magnetic moment measurements. The Mössbauer spectrum exhibited anessentially symmetric hyperfine field pattern of 259KOe in as-quenched amorphous state atroom temperature. The Curie and crystallization temperature were determined to beTc=708K and Tx.= 803K, respectively. The Tx value was in good agreement with DSCmeasurement results. The occupied fraction of the nanocrystalline phases of α-Fe(Si) andFe2 at in situ optimum annealing temperature was about 57% and 43%, respectively. It isnotable that the magnetization of the amorphous phase decreases more rapidly withincreasing temperature than those of nanocrystalline ferromagnetism, suggesting thepresence of the distribution of exchange interaction in the amorphous phase or highmetalloid contents.

The magnetic properties of permanent magnetic nanocomposites are investigated both experimentally and by model calculations. Rare-earth transition-metal films and nanocomposite thin films containing a L10 hard phase (PtFe) have been prepared by plasma sputtering and heat treatment. By choosing suitable heat-treatment processes a nearly ideal nanostructure and high energy products of up to about 50 MGOe have been achieved for the Fe-Pt system. The behavior of the nanocomposites is discussed in terms of a model applicable to nearly ideal magnets, where there are no pronounced shoulders in the hysteresis loops. Analytic expressions for M(H) are obtained for a number of cases, and it is discussed how the loops depend on the micromagnetic parameters of the involved phases. A novel aspect of magnetic nanostructures is that very small magnetic grains exhibit very large energy products, even if they are intrinsically soft-magnetic.

This study relates the microstructure of equiatomic binary alloys of CoPt and FePt with their room-temperature hysteretic magnetic properties, particularly their high coercivity. A transformation from an atomically disordered, face-centered-cubic structure to the Li0 ordered structure occurred during post-deposition annealing and was characterized using digital analysis of dark-field transmission electron microscopy (TEM) images. The transformation was observed to follow first-order nucleation and growth kinetics, and the ordered volume fraction transformed was quantified at numerous points during the transformation. The ordered volume fraction was then compared to the magnetic coercivity data obtained from a superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID) magnetometer. Although the relationship most commonly described in the literature is that the highest coercivity corresponds to a two phase ordered/disordered mixture, the maximum value for coercivity in this study was found to correspond to the fully ordered state. Furthermore, in samples that were less than fully ordered, a direct relationship between ordered volume fraction and coercivity was observed. The proposed mechanism for the high coercivity in these films is an increasing density of magnetic domain wall pinning sites concurrent with an increasing fraction of ordered phase.

Thin film CoPt/Co bilayers have been prepared as a model system to investigate the relationship between microstructure and exchange coupling in two-phase hard/soft composite magnets. CoPt films, with a thickness of 25 nm, were sputter-deposited from a nearly equiatomic alloy target onto oxidized Si wafers. The films were subsequently annealed at 700°C and fully transformed from the FCC phase to the magnetically hard, ordered LI0 phase. The coercivity of the films increased rapidly with annealing time until it reached a plateau at approximately 9.5 kOe. Fully-ordered CoPt films were then used as substrates for deposition of Co layers, with thicknesses in the range of 2.8–225 nm, in order to produce the hard/soft composite bilayers. As predicted by theory, the magnetic coherency between the soft Co phase and the hard, ordered CoPt phase decreased as the thickness of the soft phase increased. This decrease in coupling was clearly seen in the magnetic hysteresis loops of the bilayers. At small thicknesses of Co (a few nanometers), the shape of the loop was one of a uniform material showing no indication of the presence of two phases with extremely different coercivities. At larger Co thicknesses, constricted loops, i.e., ones showing the presence of a mixture of two ferromagnetic phases of different hardnesses, were obtained. The magnetic exchange present in the bilayer samples was qualitatively analyzed using magnetic recoil curves and the dependence of exchange coupling on the soft phase dimension in the bilayer hard/soft composite magnet films is discussed.

Quad-crystal Co/NiAI/Ag thin films were epitaxially grown on hydrofluoric acid etched Si(111) single crystal substrates by sputter deposition. The orientation relationship was studied by x-ray θ;/2θ; diffraction and pole figure Φ-scan, and it was determined to be Co(image1) 11 NiAI(1 10) 11 Ag(111) 11 Si(1 11). The Ag layer contains two twin-related orientations of grains. NiAI grows with three variants of grains on the Ag(1 11) layer. Since Co(image1) contains grains with four possible easy axis directions when grown on each NiAl variant, the quad-crystal media consist of grains with twelve easy axis directions and exhibit nearly isotropic in-plane magnetic properties. Meanwhile, uni-crystal Co(image2)/NiAl(1 12) films were also epitaxially grown on Ag(110)/HF-Si(110) templates. The orientation relationships determined from these epitaxial films were very useful in understanding the texture evolution of the Co alloys on NiAl. It indicates that the Co (image2) texture evolution on the (110) texture of NiAl on amorphous substrates, such as NiP/A1Mg or glass, is due to a difficult to observe NiA1 (112) texture on the top of the (110) texture.

We have applied the Neel's spin pair potential model to model the dependence of magnetocrystalline anisotropy on the long range order parameter. We have produced CoPt nanoscale thin films, with and without an immiscible second phase, by RF and DC magnetron sputtering. These thin films showed a shoulder in their magnetic hysteresis, indicative of a disordered soft magnetic phase for samples annealed above 600 °C while it was barely detectable in 500–600 °C annealed samples. A (111) texture is observed in as-deposited and annealed films is identified as one of the possible contributions to the lower coercivity squareness S* and perpendicular magnetic properties. Micromagnetic calculations confirmed a poor exchange interaction, identified rotational energy barriers and inferred that the ordered region was not fully ordered. The initial stage of ordering clearly showed a discontinuous type transformation.