Growth and stress relaxation of Co/NiO bilayers on MgO(001)

Abstract

Co/NiO bilayers have been grown on a MgO(001) surface in an ultrahigh vacuum sputtering chamber under various deposition conditions. Investigations by x-ray diffraction, atomic force microscopy, and high resolution transmission electron microscopy give evidence for a close relationship between structure and deposition conditions for the two different layers. The role of the deposition rate on the oxide layer surface roughness is particularly emphasized. At high deposition rates, surface roughness increases with temperature, whereas the surface remains flat for low deposition rates. Whatever the growth conditions, the NiO layer grows epitaxially on the MgO substrate with the orientation relationship NiO(001)[100]//MgO(001)[100], The misfit strain (about 1%), elastically accommodated in the thinner layers (3 nm), is fully relaxed in 50-nm-thick layers. A temperature dependence of the cobalt layer structure is observed: at room temperature it grows in its high temperature face-centered cubic structure, whereas it grows in the hexagonal close-packed structure at slightly higher temperatures. The influence of oxygen deficiency in NiO on the growth mode of the cobalt layer is also discussed. © 2001 American Institute of Physics.