Dimensional effects in Ni-Cr multilayered thin films

Abstract

The dimensionality of Ni-Cr multilayered structures (MLS) was studied from the variation of the temperature dependence of the saturation magnetization Ms with the Ni layer thickness. Since NiCr alloys containing more than 12% Cr are nonmagnetic the thickness of the interfaces and pure Ni regions can be obtained from the measured value of Ms by modeling the MLS and determining the thickness of the pure Ni regions. Assuming that the pure Ni regions are isolated sufficiently to behave independently, comparison was made with several theories. It was found that the observed behavior is similar to that described by the theory of Davis and Keffer with a surface anisotropy energy of about 0.1 that of the exchange energy. This theory uses nonperiodic boundary conditions and assumes a surface anisotropy field which causes the partial pinning of the surface spins. The magnetization decrease calculated with this theory falls off less rapidly with film thickness than other theories. At high fields the magnetization and Curie temperatures of the MLS having 20 Å or less of Ni is found to be field dependent. This is indicative that a considerable amount of the magnetic moments arise from itinerant d electrons.