Electrodeposition of Co/Cu Multilayered Thin films and Microposts

Abstract

Multilayer Co/Cu thin films were galvanostatically deposited onto n-type (100) silicon wafers with a 20 nm Cu seed layer. Both a regular square-wave pulse and a pulse train method were examined. The current-in-plane (CIP) giant magnetoresistance (GMR) that resulted when the cobalt layers were pulsed in a pulse train fashion together with a single copper layer pulse, showed a maximum in the GMR value with duty cycle. X-ray lithography and electrodeposition were combined to deposit an array of CoCu/Cu multilayer microposts into deep recesses for novel GMR architectures. The GMR was measured with the current perpendicular to the plane of the multilayers (CPP) in a single micropost with a height of 500 μm and a cross section of 183×183 μm.