CoFe alloys have important applications in recording heads since they have a high M S which enables writing to high coercivity media. They also can have a high coercivity which can hinder applications. Previous studies have attempted to reduce the coercivity by the use of seed layers, process conditions, or lamination. We have used a high target utilization sputtering system that allows control of grain size to study laminated Co 35 Fe 65 films with 15 Å Al 2 O 3 spacer layers. Samples were fabricated with Ru, Ni 81 Fe 19 , and Ta seed layers, as a single layer, a bilayer, or a trilayer. For samples with Ru and Ni 81 Fe 19 seed layers, the grain size was reduced with increasing lamination resulting in a significantly reduced coercivity. Samples with a Ta seed layer showed the opposite trend and an increase of coercivity was found as the number of laminations increased.