Abstract
We report a novel perpendicularly magnetized thin film [Co91.5Ta4.5Zr4/Pd]5 multilayer, which exhibits strong perpendicular magnetic anisotropy when grown on 5 nm of Pd and Ru seed layers. The Pd-seeded multilayer annealed at 300 °C shows an effective uniaxial anisotropy constant, Keff = 1.1 MJ m−3, with an anisotropy field as high as 1.6 T. The perpendicular anisotropy is sustained on annealing at 400 °C for 1 h. X-ray diffraction on multilayers with 30 repeats suggests that the use of amorphous CoTaZr reduces the stress of the stack, compared to [Co/Pd] multilayer.
Highlights
Multilayer thin films with perpendicular magnetic anisotropy (PMA)[1] have attracted much interest as they are potentially valuable in various applications, ranging from ultrahigh density bit-patterned media[2] to magnetic-tunnel-junction-based magnetic random access memory (MRAM).[3,4,5,6]
Anomalous Hall Effect (AHE) responses were measured in the standard four point configuration within an electromagnet capable of generating out-of-plane fields up to 180 mT. Magnetization for both in-plane and out-of-plane configurations was measured on 4 mm square samples in a Quantum Design superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID) magnetometer
We found a significant contribution of magnetically polarized Pd to the magnetization of the Pd-seeded [CoTaZr/Pd] multilayers, similar to that reported in [Co/Pd] system.[7,11]
Summary
Multilayer thin films with perpendicular magnetic anisotropy (PMA)[1] have attracted much interest as they are potentially valuable in various applications, ranging from ultrahigh density bit-patterned media[2] to magnetic-tunnel-junction-based magnetic random access memory (MRAM).[3,4,5,6] A number of multilayer systems, where typically ultrathin Co or cobalt-based alloy layers of a few tenths of nanometer in thickness are sandwiched between fcc(111) oriented transition metal layers such as Pd,[7] Pt,[8] Ni,[9] and Au,[10] are known to exhibit PMA. Magnetic properties of a multilayer can be tuned by varying the thickness of individual layer, the number of repeats, the seed layer, the deposition conditions, or the post thermal annealing temperature.[11,12,13,14,15,16] We present [Co91.5Ta4.5Zr4/Pd] multilayer system, which exhibits strong out-of-plane anisotropy with the effective perpendicular anisotropy constant, Keff, as high as 1.1 MJ m−3 after annealing at 300 ◦C.
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