Magnetic anisotropy and exchange interactions in Fe/Co multilayers grown on different substrates

Abstract

Fe/Co ultra-thin multilayers were simultaneously e-beam evaporated onto different substrates, varying both the Co and the Fe thickness as well the deposition order. For all the samples a strong uniaxial in-plane anisotropy has been detected. In particular the low intermixing at the interfaces, the adopted growing conditions and the low thickness of the elemental layers allow to obtaining magnetically textured samples also when the starting layer is constituted by Fe. The substrates influence the microstructure of the samples determining the strength of coercivity and the tilting out of the film plane of the easy magnetization axis. © 2010 IOP Publishing Ltd.