AVS 50th International Symposium
    Magnetic Interfaces and Nanostructures Wednesday Sessions
       Session MI+TF-WeA

Paper MI+TF-WeA4
Correlated Structural and Magnetization Reversal Studies on Epitaxial Ni Films Grown with MBE and with Sputtering

Wednesday, November 5, 2003, 3:00 pm, Room 316

Session: Magnetic Thin Films
Presenter: Z. Zhang, University of Toledo
Authors: Z. Zhang, University of Toledo
R.A. Lukaszew, University of Toledo
A. Zambano, Michigan State University
C. Cionca, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
D. Walko, Argonne National Laboratory
E. Dufresne, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
M. Yeadon, National University of Singapore
R. Clarke, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
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The study of epitaxial magnetic thin films is important to understand structure-property correlations. We have studied the correlation between film structure and azimuthal dependence of the magnetization reversal on (001) epitaxial Ni films grown on MgO substrates with two different deposition techniques: molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) and DC magnetron sputtering . The films were grown and annealed in-situ under identical conditions. The magnetization reversal was investigated using MOKE. The coercive field in the sputtered films exhibits 4-fold symmetry as expected for a crystal of good epitaxial quality. The MBE grown films exhibit an additional uniaxial symmetry superimposed to the four-fold symmetry. We note that films of the same thickness made with these two deposition techniques, exhibited the same average coercivity. We performed high-resolution XRD at the Advanced Photon Source (ANL) in order to establish similarities and differences in the structure of the films. Both types of films exhibit epitaxial growth and very good crystalline quality with no indication of strain, and don't exhibit fundamental structural differences. The main difference between the films was the surface morphology. STM images of the surface of the MBE grown films indicated self-assembled periodic stripe nano-patterning, while STM images of the sputtered films didn't exhibit any regular patterning of the surface. Cross sectional TEM studies performed on the films will be correlated with the surface morphology and with the magnetic anisotropy.