Nanostructured SmCo 5 thin films with perpendicular anisotropy formed in a wide range of Sm-Co compositions

Abstract

In this work, we prepared SmCo 5 thin films with (000/) texture exhibiting perpendicular anisotropy in a wide range of Sm xCo 100-x compositions (x = 13.2 ∼ 37.0) on Cu/Ta underlayers. At a composition of Sm 16.7Co 83.3 (SmCo 5), the SmCo 5 film exhibits a maximum perpendicular coercivity of 18.2 kOe, which is attributed to a good crystallinity and an excellent (000/) texture. The SmCo 5 (000/) peaks are shifted to smaller angles compared to the standard powder sample which indicates the formation of a SmCoCu alloy through Cu diffusion. The EDX result for this sample gives a composition of SmCo 3Cu 2.1 which confirms Cu diffusion into the SmCo 5 layer. TEM image shows that SmCo 5 film is well crystallized with a grain size of 50 nm. © 2011 American Scientific Publishers.