Improved magnetization in sputtered dysprosium thin films

Ferromagnetism in DyRh and DyRhX (X = Fe, Ni, Co, Gd) thin films

“…No Dy 2 O 3 related peaks could be found in XRD Θ-2Θ scans. Ta was successfully used as a capping material to prevent further corrosion under standard atmospheric conditions as well as oxygen from the substate's oxide layer to diffuse into the magnetic layer [19] [20] [21], see figure 1 (a Table 1: Fabrication details of all DyRh and DyRhX (X = Fe, Co, Ni, Gd) samples as presented in this study.…”

“…. As pure Gd [17], Dy [19] and also DyGd [30] alloys order hexagonally and no related peak is visible, the two peaks in…”

“…Sample preparation and magnetometry were done in the manner described previously [17]. Following our practice for polycrystalline Dy films [19], the terminology "maximum magnetization" or "high-field (spontaneous) magnetization" The relative uncertainty of the magnetization values is approximately ΔM/M = 6% (discussion in [27]). The uncertainty of the temperatures is dictated by the according step size of the scan.…”

“…RE metals are particularly sensitive to changes in interatomic spacing [32], hence crystalline material tends to suffer from reduced high-field magnetization for they often do not fully saturate [33] and, for Gd antiparallel coupling of adjacent atoms in the grain boundary region [34] was found to have negative impact, too. Secondly, there is a stressed lattice, which can have similar diminishing impact on magnetization due to a change in interatomic spacing, as for pure Dy [19].…”

“…Those scans indicate the complex magnetic structure of the ternary alloys. 1/χ plots were used to determine bifurcation and Néel temperatures as well as further magnetic transitions: (c) would be an asperomagnetic magnetic structure -known from for instance pure Dy, whose ZFC-FC plots look qualitatively similar, yet which has different transition temperatures [19]. whereas the high-field magnetization slightly increased for Fe, perhaps due to the stabilisation of the DyRh phase (although texture improvement of pure DyRh did not yield increased M S ); also for and even pure DyRh, which is desirable for applications such as magnetic recording.…”