Development of crystalline magnetic thin films for microlevitation

In recent years, magnetic levitation is finding interesting applications in various fields related to microdevices. Producing inexpensive microfabricated magnetic films is of high importance to all magnetically levitated microdevices. This paper introduces a microlevitation system and presents the fabrication of Co-Ni-Mn-P films using electrodeposition. The fabrication parameters are varied such that magnetization direction of the film is varied by changing the crystal structure. The magnetic properties of the films such as coercivity, remanence, and maximum energy product demonstrate that hexagonal structure promotes out-of-plane magnetization whereas cubic structure reinforces in-plane magnetization. The performance of the Co-Ni-Mn-P films is evaluated by magnetic levitation experiments of silicon samples. Satisfactory results are obtained toward the goal of realization of a magnetically levitated microgripper. (C) 2008 American Institute of Physics.