Abstract
The cobalt thin films were directly grown on n-Si(100) substrates in a non-aqueous electrolyte of 0.1 M CoCl2 by using pulsed electrodeposition technique. In this paper, the growth, structural and magnetic properties of thin Co films have been investigated. Current transient experiments showed that Co nuclei in the early deposition stage forms through three dimensional (3D) instantaneous nucleation followed by diffusion-limited growth. From the atomic force microscopy (AFM) analysis, it has been found that the film surface consisted of cubic and distorted rectangular-shaped nanocrystallites with the average size of about 140 nm irrespective of the deposition voltage. X-ray diffraction (XRD) measurement indicated that Co was arranged with only a hexagonal close-packed (hcp) structure not involving face-centered cubic (fcc) Co or silicide phases. Vibrating sample magnetometer (VSM) measurements revealed that the easy magnetization axis of Co thin film is parallel to the film plane.
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