Effect of Mo interlayer on magnetic properties of exchange coupled Sm-Co/Fe bilayers

Abstract

Sm-Co/Fe, hard/soft magnetic bilayers have been fabricated on 70 nm Cr buffered Si (100) substrate by dc and rf magnetron sputtering and annealed at 525 O C for 30min. Very thin Mo layers (0-0.7 nm) were introduced between Sm-Co and Fe layers. The samples were analyzed by X-Ray Diffraction (XRD) and Alternating Gradient Magnetometer (AGM). All of the samples showed strong exchange coupling between hard and soft magnetic phases. Magnetization, coercivity and energy product (BH) max suggest a sinusoidal behavior. The energy product was found increased to 45% for 0.3 nm Mo interlayer as compared to sample without Mo layer.

A systematic study of4dand5dtransition metal mediated exchange coupling between Fe and Gd nanolaminates

“…For four non magnetic spacers, the magnetic coupling disappears, while in Cr and Mn the oscillating behaviour is sustained by the intrinsic magnetic moment as experimentally observed [11,21]. The oscillating behaviour, reported in figure 5, was already observed in other heterostructures with bcc Fe/Co [20,24]. However in our case the oscillation decays more rapidly with the spacer thickness as was shown in similar systems for nonmagnetic spacer [25], probably due to the different properties of Gd.…”