The effect of oxygen as a surfactant on thermal stability in CoFe/Cu multilayers

Author

Petford-Long, A.K. ; Larson, D.J. ; Cerezo, A. ; Ma, Y.Q. ; Brown, H.L. ; Yi, J.Y. ; Grove, R.K. ; Morrone, A.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Mater., Oxford Univ., UK

fYear

2003

fDate

March 30 2003-April 3 2003

Abstract

In this paper, the effect of annealing on the films grown with and without oxygen is likely to be related to the way in which the oxygen acts as a surfactant, which by reducing surface diffusion, leads to layers that are further from equilibrium before annealing. The films deposited in Ar+O/sub 2/ have an enhanced MR ratio. GMR curves for the films after annealing at 300/spl deg/C for 0.5 hours. The annealing has led to a decrease in the GMR ratio, with the decrease being greater for the Ar+O/sub 2/ and b) Ar. For the Ar+O/sub 2/ film, annealing has reduced the saturation magnetisation and increased the proportion of ferromagnetic coupling, which will lead to decrease in MR ratio. The changes to the transport and magnetic properties can be explained by changes to the microstructure during annealing.

Keywords

annealing; cobalt alloys; copper; crystal microstructure; ferromagnetic materials; giant magnetoresistance; iron alloys; magnetic multilayers; magnetisation; oxygen; surface diffusion; surfactants; thermal stability; 0.5 hour; 300 degC; CoFe-Cu; CoFe/Cu multilayers; GMR curves; annealing; ferromagnetic coupling; giant magnetoresistance; magnetic properties; microstructure; oxygen effect; saturation magnetisation; surface diffusion; surfactant; thermal stability; transport properties; Annealing; Argon; Drives; Magnetic materials; Magnetic multilayers; Nonhomogeneous media; Oxygen; Saturation magnetization; Thermal stability; X-ray scattering;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Magnetics Conference, 2003. INTERMAG 2003. IEEE International

Conference_Location

Boston, MA, USA

Print_ISBN

0-7803-7647-1

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/INTMAG.2003.1230763

Filename

1230763