Abstract
Fe100-xGax giant magnetostrictive films (GMF) are attracting ever increasing attention for their potential application to manufacturing integrated magnetostrictive displacement sensors. However, it is difficult to fabricate Fe100-xGax thin films with different compositions at will. The influence of compositions on alloy phases, grain sizes, film surface roughness, and magnetic domains of the films and magnetization of magnetron sputtered Fe100-xGax films was investigated. Changing the ratio of the pure iron slice areas to alloy target areas, the desired film composition was achieved by the improved Mosaic method. The morphologies, magnetic domain structure, microstructure, and compositions of Fe100-xGax films revealed by SEM, EDS, XRD, MFM, VSM, and TEM. The results show that there are <1 1 0 > texture in magnetron sputtered Fe100-xGax films. The sharp peak attributed to the A2 microstructure suggests that the film is crystalline. The magnetic domain structure of Fe100-xGax films presents a network form, and the domain width decreases with the decrease of gallium content. It is also found that the magnetic domains of the films are not uniform. The TEM result shows that there are some strip patterns in the films, and the diffraction ring is discontinuous because of the structure extinction. For a suitable candidate of microdevice applications in MEMS, the optimum composition film should be Fe83.25Ga16.75 film.
Highlights
Fe100-xGax giant magnetostrictive films (GMF) are attracting ever increasing attention for their potential application to manufacturing integrated magnetostrictive displacement sensors [1,2,3]
The grain size and surface roughness increase with the increasing of substrate temperature
The desired film composition was achieved by changing the ratio of the pure iron slice areas to alloy target areas
Summary
Fe100-xGax giant magnetostrictive films (GMF) are attracting ever increasing attention for their potential application to manufacturing integrated magnetostrictive displacement sensors [1,2,3]. Fe100-xGax films are the suitable candidate of other magnetostrictive materials, e.g., Terfenol-D and FeGa alloy, because of its superior synthetic properties [4]. Magnetron sputtering is a commonly technology used to prepare giant magnetostrictive films [6, 7]. Film grain size will be small and as well as surface roughness will be decrease when the substrates were maintained at lower temperature. This is beneficial to improve the performance of thin films. Basumatary et al report the microstructure and magnetic properties of Fe100-xGax films deposited at different deposited temperatures [5]. The grain size and surface roughness increase with the increasing of substrate temperature. X-ray diffraction and TEM results revealed the presence of disordered A2 phase in the films
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