Effect of microstructures on the coercivity of Fe1-xBx(0≤x≤0.2) films prepared by dc magnetron sputtering

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

We examined the effects of the variation of boron content in Fe-B films on the microstructure and the coercivity of Fe^(1-χ)B_(χ) (0≤χ≤0.2) magnetic thin films by means of transmission electron microscopy, auger electron spectroscopy (AES), field emission scanning electron microscope, atomic force microscopy, and Cu K_(α) X-ray diffraction pattern analysis. Fe-B thin films were fabricated by do magnetron sputtering. The sputtered Fe-B films with a boron content < 13 at% were found to have metastable Fe(B) solid solution. However, amorphization took place when the boron content was > 13 at%. Sputtering pressure was fixed at 1×10^(-3) Torr to prevent oxygen intrusion, which induces a columnar structure in films and eventually deteriorates the soft magnetic properties of the films. Nevertheless, according to the AES depth profile, oxygen and argon atoms were incorporated into all films approximately up to 5 at%. While bare Fe film showed a columnar structure, there was no evidence of columnar structure in boron-containing films. Both root mean square roughness and coercivity decreased drastically with the increase in boron content. These results may be due to the evolution of featureless films with smoother surface by amorphization.

목차 (Table of Contents)

• 1. Introduction
• 2. Experimental
• 3. Results and Discussion
• 4. Conclusions
• Acknowledgment
• References