Growth rate and substrate temperature dependent magnetic and magneto-microstructural properties of sputtered Fe-Co-Al thin films

Abstract

This work reports the effect of growth rate and substrate temperature on the structural, magnetic and magneto-microstructural properties of Fe-Co-Al alloy thin films. 75 nm thick Fe-Co-Al films were deposited on Si 〈100〉 substrates at room temperature by high power impulse magnetron sputtering at different growth rates viz., 0.67–1.6 Å/s. All the films exhibited a uniform composition of about Fe60Co25Al15 irrespective of growth rates. In addition to this, all the films crystallized in single phase with bcc type structure. Growth rate was found to have a considerable impact on the magnetic properties of Fe-Co-Al thin films. Film grown at 1.3 Å/s exhibited an in-plane magnetic anisotropy with large saturation magnetization combined with low coercivity when compared with other films. To improve the magnetic properties further, Fe-Co-Al films were also processed at different substrate temperatures (Ts) viz., 300, 400 and 500 °C. Substrate temperature of about 300 °C was found to have beneficial effect on the soft magnetic characteristics of Fe-Co-Al films. While the crystal structure did not show any perceptible change with processing conditions, magnetic microstructures traced from magneto optic Kerr microscopy displayed substantial change. Upon increase in substrate temperature, during magnetization reversal process, magnetic domain images traced along the easy magnetization direction magnetization showed transformation from branched band domains (as-deposited) → wide band domains (Ts = 300 °C) → less periodic branched band domains (Ts = 400 °C) → ripple domains (Ts = 500 °C). Attempts were made to correlate the achieved magnetic properties in Fe-Co-Al with magnetic microstructures.