Abstract
In this study, ferromagnetic MnAl films were prepared by alternating Al/Mn quasi-monolayer deposition using a novel biased target ion beam deposition (BTIBD) technique. XRD results showed that the magnetic τ phase was well formed in MnAl thin films (∼10 nm), which grew epitaxially on single crystal MgO (001) substrates. The optimized saturation magnetization was ∼394 emu/cc. Furthermore, we observed a thickness-dependent uniaxial anisotropy in ferromagnetic MnAl films, which was attributed to the change of the tetragonal lattice distortion as a function of film thickness. The relationship between the film thicknesses and saturation magnetizations suggested the existence of a magnetically dead layer ∼2.7 nm with an extrapolated saturation moment around 523 emu/cc (∼1.90 μB/Mn). This value has exceeded the experimental value in bulk materials and is close to the theoretically predicted magnetization (∼1.975 μB/Mn).
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