Control and Analysis of Grain Size in Sputtered NiFe Thin Films

Abstract

In this paper we describe a method for deposition of ferromagnetic thin films with controlled grain size and distri- bution. The close control of grain size without the use of seed layers is demonstrated for NiFe - permalloy films by using a novel sputtering technology. We also present a detailed analysis of the grain size distribution based on the cumulative percentage technique. This is a more convenient mathematical approach to the study of particle size distributions as it gives consistent results even for a small number of particles.