AVS 52nd International Symposium
    Magnetic Interfaces and Nanostructures Thursday Sessions
       Session MI+MS+NS-ThM

Paper MI+MS+NS-ThM8
Magnetic Properties of Epitaxial FeN Thin Films

Thursday, November 3, 2005, 10:40 am, Room 204

Session: Advanced Magnetic Storage and Manufacturing Processes
Presenter: C. Sanchez-Hanke, Brookhaven National Laboratory
Authors: R.A. Lukaszew, University of Toledo
R. Gonzalez-Arrabal, University Autonoma of Madrid, Spain
C. Sanchez-Hanke, Brookhaven National Laboratory
R. Loloee, Michigan State University
D. Boerma, University Autonoma of Madrid, Spain
Correspondent: Click to Email
Low anisotropy and low magnetostriction iron based FCC films are attractive candidate materials for inductive thin film write heads in magnetic recording. Currently these are made of permalloy and other Fe alloys with polarization ranging from 1.0-1.6 T. Higher polarization is needed to create sufficient stray field to write on the higher-coercivity media that is needed as head and bit dimensions decrease to allow higher areal densities. Fe-N has been proposed as a possible material for the sensing element in read-head. Fe-N exhibits a variety of phases, some of which have enhance magnetic moment. In particular the meta-stable @alpha@"- Fe16N2 is particularly interesting because has the largest saturation magnetization reported of all known materials. We will present a comparative experimental study on epitaxial Fe-N thin films with varying degrees of @alpha@", @alpha@' and @gamma@' phases. The films were obtained using either sputtering or MBE. In the latter case, the films were grown in the presence of a N flow and the growth conditions were optimised in order to obtain a high content of @alpha@"- Fe16N2. A variety of characterization techniques was used to establish the epitaxial character of the films as well as the amount and kind of phase present. The magnetic properties of the samples was characterized by element specific X-ray Magnetic Circular Dichroism (XMCD).