Fabrication of <i>L</i>1₀-FeNi films by denitriding FeNiN films

Abstract

L10-FeNi films textured with the a-axis perpendicular to the film plane were successfully fabricated by denitriding FeNiN films. 20-nm-thick FeNiN films with two variants were epitaxially grown on SrTiO3(001), MgAl2O4(001), and MgO(001) substrates by molecular beam epitaxy. Denitriding was performed by annealing at 300 °C for 4 h under an H2 gas atmosphere. The epitaxial relationships were L10-FeNi[001](100) || substrate[100](001) and L10-FeNi[010](100) || substrate[100](001). The uniaxial magnetic anisotropy energy (Ku) of the L10-FeNi film was estimated to be 4.4 × 10 6 erg/cm 3 at room temperature by magnetic torque measurement. This Ku value corresponds to a degree of long range order of 0.4.

Epitaxial L1-FeNi films with high degree of order and large uniaxial magnetic anisotropy fabricated by denitriding FeNiN films

“…3(a). 24 Figures 1(a 23,24 In other words, the two variants with the in-plane c-axis of FeNiN intersecting at 90 were formed indicated by variants A and B in Fig. 1(c).…”

“…This high S value exceeds the values reported previously. 2,10,11,16,17 20 nm-thick FeNiN films were grown by the simultaneous supply of Fe, Ni, and radio frequency N 2 by MBE 23,24 by changing the growth temperature (T S ) to 200, 250, and 350 C. After the growth, the FeNiN films were annealed at 300 C for 4 h in a furnace with a 1.0 l/min H 2 gas flow rate for denitriding, resulting in the fabrication of L1 0 -FeNi films. The thicknesses of the L1 0 -FeNi films were estimated by x-ray reflectometry.…”