Investigation of magnetic coupling in sputtered epitaxial Fe/Cr and Co/Cu wedged structures

We explore the magnetic interlayer exchange coupling in single-crystalline Fe/Cr and Co/Cu wedged multilayers prepared by magnetron sputtering on two orientations of MgO-(100) and (110). Structural examination shows that high quality epitaxial films are obtained in both systems using seeded epitaxy growth techniques. Oscillatory interlayer coupling is observed in Cr-wedged samples grown on both MgO(100) and MgO(110) with similarly long oscillation periods of similar to 18 Angstrom. These results are comparable to earlier work for molecular beam epitaxy and sputter-deposited epitaxial Fe/Cr structures. Long-period oscillatory coupling is also observed in sputtered Co/Cu(110) for the Cu-wedged structures. Studies of the dependence of magnetic coupling on the thickness of the magnetic layers for fixed Cr layer thickness provides no evidence of any nonmonotonic dependence. (C) 1996 American Institute of Physics.