Morphology induced large magnetic anisotropy in obliquely grown nanostructured thin film on nanopatterned substrate

Abstract

The artificial tailoring of magnetic anisotropy by manipulating surface and interface morphology is attracting widespread interest for its application in spintronic and magnetic memory devices. Here oblique angle deposition on a nanopatterned rippled substrate is presented as a novel route of inducing large in-plane uniaxial magnetic anisotropy (UMA) in magnetic thin films. For this purpose, Cobalt films and rippled SiO2 substrates have been taken as a model system for the present study. Here, nanopatterned substrates are prepared by low energy ion beam erosion (IBE), above which films are deposited obliquely along and normal to the ripple directions. A clear anisotropy in the growth behavior has been observed due to the inhomogeneous in-plane organization of adatoms in the form of columns. The increased shadowing effect in the films deposited obliquely normal to the direction of the ripple patterns causes preferential coalescence of the columns along the substrate ripples, resulting in stronger in-plane UMA in the film. This peculiarity in magnetic behavior is addressed by considering the morphological anisotropy governed by enhanced shadowing effect, the shape anisotropy and the dipolar interactions among the magnetostatically coupled ripple structure.