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The relationship between the interface structure and perpendicular anisotropy in sputtered Co/Pd multilayers has been investigated using grazing incidence x-ray scattering and vibrating sample magnetometry. Using fits to a self-affine fractal model of the interfaces, the variation in in-plane correlation length, fractal parameter and conformality has been determined as a function of the number of repeats in the Co/Pd bilayers. As the number of interfaces rises, the roughness becomes predominantly non-conformal and the in-plane length scale associated with the roughness increases as a power law with multilayer thickness. It is suggested that the loss of conformality, characterized by a relatively short out-of-plane correlation length, may be the cause of the reduction in anisotropy energy per interface observed for high numbers of bilayer repeats. There is a weak association between fractal parameter and interface anisotropy; a reduction in the fractal dimension of the interface appears to result in a higher surface anisotropy.

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