Reflection high-energy electron diffraction based texture determination: Magnetic thin films for perpendicular media

Application of reflection high-energy electron diffraction (RHEED) to texture determination is demonstrated for magnetic thin film applications. Diffraction pattern analysis based on kinematic theory of RHEED is outlined. Application of the technique is demonstrated for texture characterization of hexagonal-close-packed CoCr alloys that are used as recording layers in perpendicular recording media. It is shown that both texture orientation and texture angular dispersion extracted from RHEED patterns are in agreement with the data obtained using x-ray diffraction. (C) 2000 American Institute of Physics. [S0021-8979(00)83708-1].