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Phase velocities of surface acoustic waves in several boron nitride films were investigated by Brillouin light scattering. In the case of films with predominantly hexagonal crystal structure, grown under conditions close to the nucleation threshold of cubic BN, four independent elastic constants have been determined from the dispersion of the Rayleigh and the first Sezawa mode. The large elastic anisotropy of up to c11/c33 = 0.1 is attributed to a pronounced texture with the c-axes of the crystallites parallel to the film plane. In the case of cubic BN films the dispersion of the Rayleigh wave provides evidence for the existence of a more compliant layer at the substrate-film interface. The observed broadening of the Rayleigh mode is identified to be caused by the film morphology.
Hexagonal BN films have been deposited by rf-magnetron sputtering with simultaneous ion plating. The elastic properties of the films grown on silicon substrates under identical coating conditions have been de-termined by Brillouin light scattering from thermally excited surface phonons. Four of the five independent elastic constants of the deposited material are found to be c11 = 65 GPa, c13 = 7 GPa, c33 = 92 GPa and c44 = 53 GPa exhibiting an elastic anisotropy c11/c33 of 0.7. The Young's modulus determined with load indenta-tion is distinctly larger than the corresponding value taken from Brillouin light scattering. This discrepancy is attributed to the specific morphology of the material with nanocrystallites embedded in an amorphous matrix.
The magnetic anisotropy of Co/Cu~001! films has been investigated by the magneto-optical Kerr effect, both in the pseudomorphic growth regime and above the critical thickness where strain relaxation sets in. A clear correlation between the onset of strain relaxation as measured by means of reflection high-energy electron diffraction and changes of the magnetic anisotropy has been found.
We present results of anisotropy and exchange-coupling studies of asymmetric Co/Cr/Fe trilayers and superlattices grown by molecular beam epitaxy on Cr~001!/Mg~001! buffers and substrates. The magnetic properties have been investigated using both the longitudinal magneto-optical Kerr effect and ferromagnetic resonance. The hysteresis data obtained from the trilayer system were fit to a theoretical model which contains both bilinear and biquadratic coupling. The effective in-plane anisotropy was found to be of fourfold symmetry with the same easy-axis orientation for both the Fe and Co layers. An analysis of the easy-axis hysteresis loops indicates long-period oscillatory coupling and also suggests a short periodic coupling. We show that weakly antiferromagnetically coupled asymmetric films might serve as potential candidates for improved spin-valve systems.
We present detailed studies of the enhanced coercivity of exchange-bias bilayer Fe/MnPd, both experimentally and theoretically. We have demonstrated that the existence of large higher-order anisotropies due to exchange coupling between different Fe and MnPd layers can account for the large increase of coercivity in Fe/MnPd system. The linear dependence of coercivity on inverse Fe thickness are well explained by a phenomenological model by introducing higher-order anisotropy terms into the total free energy of the system.
High frequency switching of single domain, uniaxial magnetic particles is discussed in terms of transition rates controlled by a small transverse bias field. It is shown that fast switching times can be achieved using bias fields an order of magnitude smaller than the effective anisotropy field. Analytical expressions for the switching time are derived in special cases and general configurations of practical interest are examined using numerical simulations.
Epitaxial growth of metastable Pd(001) at high deposition temperatures up to a critical thickness of 6 monolayers on bcc-Fe(001) is reported, the critical thickness being depending dramatically on the deposition temperature. For larger thicknesses the Pd film undergoes a roughening transition with strain relaxation by forming a top polycrystalline layer. These results allow to make a correlation between previ-ously reported unusual magnetic properties of Fe/Pd double layers and the crystallographic structure of the Pd overlayer.
We report on the exchange bias effect as a function of the in-plane direction of the applied field in twofold symmetric, epitaxial Ni 80 Fe 20 /Fe 50 Mn 50 bilayers grown on Cu~110! single-crystal substrates. An enhancement of the exchange bias field, H eb , up to a factor of 2 is observed if the external field is nearly, but not fully aligned perpendicular to the symmetry direction of the exchange bias field. From the measurement of the exchange bias field as a function of the in-plane angle of the applied field, the unidirectional, uniaxial and fourfold anisotropy contributions are determined with high precision. The symmetry direction of the unidirectional anisotropy switches with increasing NiFe thickness from [110] to [001].
FeNi/FeMn exchange bias samples with a large exchange bias field at room temperature have been prepared on a Cu buffer layer. Upon irradiation with He ions, both the exchange bias field and the coercive field are modified. For low ion doses the exchange bias field is enhanced by nearly a factor of 2. Above a threshold dose of 0.3olsi 10 15 ions/cm 2 , the exchange bias field decreases continuously as the ion dose increases. The ob-served modifications are explained in terms of defect creation acting as pinning sites for domain walls and atomic intermixing.