MAGNETIC-PROPERTIES AND TEXTURE OF SPUTTERED FE/FE3O4 MULTILAYER FILMS

Polycrystalline Fe/Fe3O4 multilayers have been fabricated with varying Fe/Fe3O4 ratios, period (bilayer) thickness, number of periods, and deposition sequence. The films were deposited by RF magnetron sputtering. The coercivity was found to vary in a nonlinear fashion between that of Fe and Fe3O4. For selected multilayer geometries, the coercivity can be increased beyond that of single-layer Fe and Fe3O4 films. The magnetic saturation was observed to follow a linear mixture rule. These results suggest that a multilayer approach is useful for designing magnetic thin films and may allow fabrication of new materials for recording media applications. A secondary result was the ability to obtain highly texture polycrystalline films of both Fe and Fe3O4 on amorphous substrates for selected multilayer geometries. The texture results, which may be generally applicable, suggest that relatively thin multilayers of only a few periods may provide a means to control polycrystalline film texture on amorphous substrates.