Magneto-optical investigation of Fe/Zr and Fe/Zr/Fe thin-film systems

Results on the investigation of magnetic and magneto-optical properties nanocrystalline Fe/Zr and Fe/Zr/Fe thin film systems are presented. The examined samples were prepared by DC magnetron sputtering technique under a base pressure of less than 10^-8 Torr and an argon gas pressure of 1times10^-3 Torr. The structural investigations of the samples were performed by X-ray diffraction analysis. The hysteresis loops and spectral dependencies of the transverse Kerr effect (TKE) for the 1.4 - 4.5 eV incident light energy range were measured employing the magneto-optical magnetometer and the magneto-optical spectrometer, respectively. The influence of the Zr layer thickness on the magnetic properties of the Fe/Zr samples was discovered. It was found that in the trilayers, the saturation field, H_s, along the easy axis of the magnetization oscillates as a function of t_zr. This result was explained by the presence of the exchange coupling between ferromagnetic layers through the Zr spacer and its oscillatory behavior with changing t_zr. The TKE spectra, obtained for all samples, were revealed to be identical but the values of TKE depend on the thickness of both the magnetic and nonmagnetic layers.