A Comparative Study on Microstructures, Magnetic Features and Morphologies of Ternary Fe–Co–Ni Alloy Thin Films Electrochemically Fabricated at Different Deposition Potentials

Abstract

Electrochemically fabricated ternary Fe-Co-Ni alloy thin films with different chemical compositions were obtained at different deposition potentials. An increase in the deposition potential increased the Ni content while it decreased the Co and Fe contents in the film structure. An anomalous co-deposition behaviour was also studied and the anomalous order of co-deposition was found to be Fe-Ni > Co-Ni > Fe-Co irrespective of deposition potential. Structural characterizations confirmed the presence of single face-centred cubic (fcc) phase structure with [111] preferred crystallographic orientation for all films. The size of the crystallites and the texture degree increased with increasing applied deposition potential. Smaller globular particles occurred on the surface structure of the film fabricated at higher deposition potentials compared to those grown at lower deposition potentials. A decrement detected in the coercive field with increasing applied deposition potential was related to the variations occurred in the chemical composition and the particle size. Keywords Ternary Fe-Co-Ni thin films • Morphologies • Magnetic features • Texture degree • Anomalous co-deposition • Applied deposition potential This paper was presented at ICSM 2018.

Electrochemical Deposition of Fe–Co–Ni Samples with Different Co Contents and Characterization of Their Microstructural and Magnetic Properties

“…In addition, the CRV Fe /CRV Co ratio was determined to be lower than the CRV Co /CRV Ni ratio, revealing that the order of ACD was Fe-Ni > Co-Ni > Fe-Co for all Co ion concentrations in the PS, which is in good agreement with the findings of conducted studies [3,6,24,46]. Ni > Co-Ni > Fe-Co for all Co ion concentrations in the PS, which is in good agreement with the findings of conducted studies [3,6,24,46]. The phase structure of the samples produced in this work was investigated via XRD analysis.…”

“…This phenomenon confirmed the creation of ACD behavior, which is the characteristic feature for the electrochemical deposition of iron-group alloys. Furthermore, the reduction rate of Fe 2+ was higher compared to the reduction rate of Co 2+ as the CRV Co was lower than CRV Fe [3,6,19,24,46,[51][52][53]. Therefore, the degree of ACD characteristics of Co-Ni was lower than Fe-Ni.…”

“…With the experimental method, the authors have successfully studied the effects of Fe ion concentration in the PS. Furthermore, the deposition potential applied during electroplating process on the chemical composition, some physical properties, and magnetic characteristics of ternary ferromagnetic thin film samples were investigated [21,24]. These experimental studies clearly demonstrated that the surface performance, magnetic and structural characteristics were affected significantly by the deposit composition caused by the variation of the electroplating parameters [21,24].…”

“…The conducted studies showed that the Fe, Ni, and Co components in binary Ni-Co, Ni-Fe and Fe-Cu and ternary Ni-Co-Cu, Ni-Fe-Cu, Co-Fe-Cu and Fe-Co-Ni magnetic materials grew by the electrochemical deposition technique on Indium Tin Oxide (ITO) covered glass substrates which can be tuned by controlling the Fe, Ni and Co ion concentrations in the Plating Solutions (PSs), respectively [13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21]. However, the relative compositions of Co and Fe components in the samples were found be higher than those in the PSs for different electroplating parameters [6,13,14,[16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24], which is in good agreement with the definition defined by Brenner [25]. In recent years, scientists have flexibly used a variety of methods to study the structural, mechanical, and magnetic properties of nanomaterials and thin films.…”

“…Furthermore, the deposition potential applied during electroplating process on the chemical composition, some physical properties, and magnetic characteristics of ternary ferromagnetic thin film samples were investigated [21,24]. These experimental studies clearly demonstrated that the surface performance, magnetic and structural characteristics were affected significantly by the deposit composition caused by the variation of the electroplating parameters [21,24]. On the other hand, in a former study, Fe-Co-Ni deposits were electrochemically manufactured on titanium sheets from a chloride-sulfate-tartaric acid medium at different Co 2+ /Ni 2+ ion ratios [46].…”