Heusler alloy Co 2 FeAl was employed as ferromagnetic layers in Co 2 FeAl/Ru/Co 2 FeAl synthetic antiferromagnet structures. The experimental results show that the structure with a Ru thickness of 0.45 nm takes on strongly antiferromagnetic coupling, which maintains up to 150 o C annealing for 1 hour. The structure has a very low saturation magnetization M s of 425 emu/cc, a low switching field H sw of 4.3 Oe and a high saturation field H s of 5257 Oe at room temperature, which are favorable for application in ultrahigh density magnetic read heads or other magnetic memory devices. XRD study testifies that the as-deposited Co 2 FeAl film is in B2 phase. ThereforeHeusler alloys can be used to fabricate SyAF and it is possible to make "all-Heusler" spin-valves or magnetic tunneling junctions with better magnetic switching properties and high magnetoresistance.
In this letter, we fabricated Co2FeAl films with perpendicular-to-plane magnetic anisotropy by cosputtering with terbium (Tb). The as-prepared (Tb+Co2FeAl) films (TCFA) consists of nanocrystalline L21 Co2FeAl and amorphous alloy of Tb(Co, Fe, and Al). The coercivity field (Hc) of the TCFA films is adjustable from 200 to 800 Oe. After annealing, the Hc decreases to 70 Oe. A perpendicularly magnetized spin valve with the TCFA films as free and reference layers shows a current-perpendicular-to-plane magnetoresistance of 1.8% at room temperature. Our result opens a way to fabricate perpendicularly magnetized full-Heusler alloys and makes it possible to realize faster and simple structured magnetic storage bits in the future.
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