Precise control of interface anisotropy during deposition of Co/Pd multilayers

Barton, C.W.; Slater, T.J.A.; Rowan-Robinson, R.M.; Haigh, S.J.; Atkinson, D.; Thomson, T.

doi:10.1063/1.4902826

Precise control of interface anisotropy during deposition of Co/Pd multilayers

Barton, C.W.; Slater, T.J.A.; Rowan-Robinson, R.M.; Haigh, S.J.; Atkinson, D.; Thomson, T.

Authors

C.W. Barton

T.J.A. Slater

R.M. Rowan-Robinson

S.J. Haigh

Professor Del Atkinson del.atkinson@durham.ac.uk
Professor

T. Thomson

Abstract

We demonstrate the control of perpendicular magnetic anisotropy (PMA) in multilayer films without modification of either the microstructure or saturation magnetization by tuning the Ar+ ion energy using remote plasma sputtering. We show that for [Co/Pd]8 multilayer films, increasing the Ar+ ion energy results in a strong decrease in PMA through an increase in interfacial roughness determined by X-ray reflectivity measurements. X-ray diffraction and transmission electron microscope image data show that the microstructure is independent of Ar+ energy. This opens a different approach to the in-situ deposition of graded exchange springs and for control of the polarizing layer in hybrid spin transfer torque devices.

Citation

Barton, C., Slater, T., Rowan-Robinson, R., Haigh, S., Atkinson, D., & Thomson, T. (2014). Precise control of interface anisotropy during deposition of Co/Pd multilayers. Journal of Applied Physics, 116(16), Article 203903. https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4902826

Journal Article Type	Article
Acceptance Date	Nov 12, 2014
Online Publication Date	Nov 26, 2014
Publication Date	Nov 26, 2014
Deposit Date	Jan 25, 2016
Publicly Available Date	Jun 26, 2018
Journal	Journal of Applied Physics
Print ISSN	0021-8979
Electronic ISSN	1089-7550
Publisher	American Institute of Physics
Peer Reviewed	Peer Reviewed
Volume	116
Issue	16
Article Number	203903
DOI	https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4902826

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Copyright Statement
© 2014 American Institute of Physics. This article may be downloaded for personal use only. Any other use requires prior permission of the author and the American Institute of Physics. The following article appeared in Barton, C. W., Slater, T. J. A., Rowan-Robinson, R. M., Haigh, S. J., Atkinson, D. & Thomson, T. (2014). Precise control of interface anisotropy during deposition of Co/Pd multilayers. Journal of Applied Physics 116(16): 203903 and may be found at https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4902826