Study of Sputtered Fe/tSi/Fe Trilayer Films: Magnetic and Electronic Properties
Ranjeet Brajpuriya, Ram K. Sharma, Ankush Vij, T. Shripathi
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DOI: 10.4236/jmp.2011.28103   PDF    HTML   XML   4,035 Downloads   8,245 Views   Citations

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.

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R. Brajpuriya, R. Sharma, A. Vij and T. Shripathi, "Study of Sputtered Fe/tSi/Fe Trilayer Films: Magnetic and Electronic Properties," Journal of Modern Physics, Vol. 2 No. 8, 2011, pp. 864-874. doi: 10.4236/jmp.2011.28103.

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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