Pulsed laser deposition and characterization of Alnico5 magnetic films

Alnico5 films were deposited by pulsed laser deposition on glass substrate at room temperature under a vacuum ∼10−3 Torr in the absence and in the presence of 500 Oe external transverse magnetic field applied on the plasma plume during film deposition. For this purpose, Nd:YAG laser was employed to ablate the Alnico5 target. The ablated material was deposited on glass substrate placed at a distance of 2 cm from the target. The structural and magnetic properties of the film were analyzed by X-ray diffraction, atomic force microscope, and vibrating sample magnetometer. X-ray diffraction patterns showed that the Alnico5 films were amorphous in nature. Atomic force microscopy revealed that the Alnico5 film deposited in absence of external magnetic field has larger root-mean-square roughness value (60.2 nm) than the magnetically deposited film (42.9 nm). Vibrating sample magnetometer measurements showed that the in-plane saturation magnetization of Alnico5 film deposited in the presence of external magnetic field increases by 32% as compared to that for the film deposited in the absence of external magnetic field. However, the out-of-plane saturation magnetization was almost independent of the external magnetic field. In magnetically deposited film, there is in-plane anisotropy parallel to the applied external magnetic field.