Experimental Study of the Magnetic Anisotropy in Electrodeposited Fe Films on Al Substrates: Effect of the Al Porosity and the Preparation Conditions

Abstract

The magnetic anisotropy is investigated for a series of Fe films prepared by electrodeposition onto porous and nonporous Al substrates and with iron chloride (FeCl <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sub> ) and iron sulfate (FeSO <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">4</sub> ) baths. The magnetic anisotropy, inferred from hysteresis curves, is uniaxial in nature with constants <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$K_{1}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> and <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$K_{2}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> . We discuss the variation of these anisotropy constants as a function of the film thickness, the temperature, the Al porosity, and the bath. All samples show an in-plane magnetic anisotropy but with different strength. Depending on the preparation condition, we find a relation between the magnetic anisotropy and the out-of-plane strain, measured by X-ray diffraction (XRD), indicating that part of the magnetic anisotropy can be attributed to stress in the films.