Abstract
The majority of rare earth/transition metal (RE-TM) magneto-optical (MO) materials are made by a sputtering process. The coercive force Hc depends very much not only on the composition but calculations have shown that it will depend also upon the size and number of voids. In this paper, we report on the effects of argon pressure on the value of Hc, on the numbers and sizes of voids, and on the values of the gap densities in the coatings with columnar structures. The numbers and sizes of the voids were determined by using small angle x-ray scattering (SAXS) measurements. The gap densities were measured by a new method using TEM. We have also determined the position of these voids using TEM. According to measurements from a vibrating sample magnetometer (VSM), SAXS, and TEM, it was found that there is a significant contribution to the increase of Hc with coating pressure by the increasing volume fraction of these voids located mainly in the gaps between the columns of the MO films.
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