Enhancement of perpendicular coercivity for CoPt top layer in CoPt/AlN multilayer structure

Journal Article · Thu Jul 15 04:00:00 EDT 2010 · Journal of Applied Physics

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1063/1.3462428· OSTI ID:21476353

Yu, Youxing; Shi, Ji; Nakamura, Yoshio ^[1]

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1. Department of Metallurgy and Ceramics Science, Tokyo Institute of Technology, 2-12-1, Oh-okayama, Meguro-ku, Tokyo 152-8552 (Japan)

The magnetic behavior of sputter deposited AlN20 nm/[CoPt2 nm/AlN2 nm]{sub 5}/CoPt(x) (x as the thickness of the top CoPt layer) multilayer structure has been studied. It has been found that the magnetic anisotropy of the structure strongly depends on thermal annealing. With increasing the annealing temperature, the film changes from the in-plane magnetic anisotropy to the perpendicular anisotropy. Especially, for the top CoPt layer, the perpendicular coercivity increases much rapidly compared with that of the CoPt layers inside the base multilayer, when increasing the annealing temperature to 500 deg. C or above. The coercivity difference between the top CoPt layer and the base multilayer caused in this way results in an antiparallel alignment state during the magnetization process. The perpendicular magnetization and the coercivity enhancement for the CoPt top layer are correlated with the change in the residual stress inside this layer.

• OSTI ID: 21476353
• Journal Information: Journal of Applied Physics, Journal Name: Journal of Applied Physics Journal Issue: 2 Vol. 108; ISSN JAPIAU; ISSN 0021-8979
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE
ALLOYS
ALUMINIUM COMPOUNDS
ALUMINIUM NITRIDES
ANISOTROPY
ANNEALING
COBALT ALLOYS
COERCIVE FORCE
DEPOSITION
FILMS
HEAT TREATMENTS
LAYERS
MAGNETIZATION
MATERIALS
NITRIDES
NITROGEN COMPOUNDS
PLATINUM ALLOYS
PLATINUM METAL ALLOYS
PNICTIDES
RESIDUAL STRESSES
SEMICONDUCTOR MATERIALS
SPUTTERING
STRESSES
TEMPERATURE DEPENDENCE
TRANSITION ELEMENT ALLOYS