High-coercivity SmCo5 thin film with in-plane or out-of-plane anisotropy

Abstract

In this work, we prepared high-coercivity SmCo5 thin films with in-plane or out-of-plane anisotropy. Our research work focused on the induction of highly textured SmCo5 thin films using suitable underlayers. A Cr underlayer was used for the fabrication of SmCo5 with in-plane anisotropy. The nanocrystalline SmCo5 thin films with a (11 2 0) texture exhibited high in-plane intrinsic coercivity up to 18.5 kOe. On the other hand, with a Cu underlayer, highly (0001) textured SmCo5 thin films showed large perpendicular anisotropy and high coercivity up to 20 kOe. Our research work showed that a very thin seedlayer (4nm) of Ta can improve the crystallinity and texture of the (111) Cu underlayer. The high quality Cu underlayer can result in high magnetic performance of SmCo5 thin films. © 2009 SPIE.