The Effect of Oblique Deposition on the Magnetic Behavior of Fe-Co Alloy Thin Films Fabricated by Sputtering Technique

Subject Areas : journal of New Materials

Khalilollah Gheisari ¹ (Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Shahid Chamran University of Ahvaz, Ahvaz, Iran)
Chong Kim Ong ² (Center for Superconducting and Magnetic Materials, Department of Physics, National University of Singapore, Singapore)

Received: 2020-07-11 Accepted : 2021-05-05 Published : 2021-02-19

Keywords: Fe-Co thin film, Ferromagnetic resonance frequency, Sputtering technique, Oblique deposition Magnetic anisotropy,

Abstract :

In the present work, the effect of oblique deposition on the properties of the Fe-Co alloy thin film with the composition of Fe90Co10 was investigated in detail. The films were deposited at the incident angle of 0° and 42° using the sputtering technique. The crystalline structure of the deposited films was evaluated via the X-ray diffraction method. The static and dynamic magnetic characteristics were determined from magnetization loops and permeability spectra, respectively. The results show that although the similar diffraction patterns with (110) preferred orientation in the nanocrystalline BCC phase of Fe-Co alloy have been obtained at both deposition conditions, their lattice parameter is noticeably different. The film deposited at the incident angle of 42° shows a lower lattice parameter. In addition, this film shows obviously different easy axis and hard axis M-H loops indicating the existence of a high magnetic anisotropy field (more than 60 Oe). As a result, the ferromagnetic resonance frequency as large as 5.71 GHz is obtained in the obliquely deposited film that is significantly higher than that observed for the normally deposited film (0.843 GHz). Furthermore, good thermal stability is observed for the as-deposited films in the temperature range of 330-420 K.

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