Effect of thickness and deposition rate on the structural and
magnetic properties of evaporated Fe/Al thin films
Authors
M Mebarki, A Layadi, L Kerkache, A Benabbas, Nicolas Tiercelin, Vladimir Preobrazhensky, Philippe Pernod
Publication date 2014/8/1 Journal
Journal of Superconductivity and Novel Magnetism Volume 27 Issue 8 Pages 1951-1957 Publisher Springer US Description
We report experimental results on the structural and magnetic properties of Fe thin films deposited by thermal evaporation onto polycrystalline Al substrates. The effect of thickness t (in the 76 to 431 nm range) and deposition rate are investigated. The texture, the strain, and the grain size values were derived from X-ray diffraction (XRD) experiments. The thinner film (76 nm) has no texture, while all other samples have a <110>texture. The strain values ε are small and negative (compressive stress) and equal to −0.1 % for films with t less than 100 nm, it decreases (in absolute value) to −0.07 % and then remains constant for t greater than 100 nm. The grain size values D are found to be between 44 and 73 nm. The grain size decreases with increasing deposition rate regardless of t. Hysteresis curves, inferred from the vibrating sample magnetometer (VSM), show an in-plane magnetic anisotropy for all samples …