TITLE:
Study of Sputtered Fe/tSi/Fe Trilayer Films: Magnetic and Electronic Properties
AUTHORS:
Ranjeet Brajpuriya, Ram K. Sharma, Ankush Vij, T. Shripathi
KEYWORDS:
Magnetic Multilayer, Silicide Formation, Interlayer Coupling, MOKE, XPS
JOURNAL NAME:
Journal of Modern Physics,
Vol.2 No.8,
August
31,
2011
ABSTRACT: A series of trilayers of sputtered Fe/Si/Fe were grown to study the interface characteristics and magnetic coupling between ferromagnetic Fe layers (30 Å thick) for Si spacer thickness (tSi) ranging from 15 Å to 40 Å. Grazing incidence x-ray diffraction, AFM, resistivity and x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) meas-urements show substantial intermixing between the layers during deposition which results in trilayers of complicated structures for different sub-layer thicknesses. A systematic variation in silicide concentration across the interface is observed by XPS measurements. The Fe layers in the trilayers were observed to con-sist of Fe layers doped with Si, ferromagnetic Fe-Si silicide layers and nonmagnetic Fe-Si silicide interface layer, while the Si spacer was found to be Fe-Si compound layers with an additional amorphous Si (α-Si) sublayer for tSi≥ 30 Å. A strong anti-ferromagnetic (AF) coupling was observed in trilayers with iron silicide spacers, which disappeared if α-Si layers present in the spacers. The observed magnetization behaviour in each case is interpreted in terms of changes in interfacial structural and electronic properties due to variation in film thickness.