Electrical and magnetic properties of CoFeAlO thin films

Influences of oxygen-partial pressure and annealing on the electrical and magnetic properties of CoFeAlO thin films were systematically investigated by means of resistivity, permeability, magnetization and ferromagnetic resonance (FMR) measurements. It was found that, with increasing oxygen-partial pressure or under annealing, the electrical resistivity of the film increased and the magnetic softness decreased, which is attributed to the microstructural change of the film. Interestingly, an as-deposited Co_45.30Fe_20.65Al_19.34O_14.71 film was found to exhibit an inverted hysteresis loop with negative coercivity, and this peculiar phenomenon disappeared upon effects of oxygen-partial pressure and annealing. It was also found that the as-deposited films owned a narrow FMR line width that increased with increasing oxygen-partial pressure or under annealing.     

Thickness dependence of the magnetic properties and magnetoimpedance effect in CoFeAlO thin films

The change of the magnetic properties and magnetoimpedance effect of Co–Fe–Al–O thin films with film thicknesses 50–1200 nm has been investigated. The coercivity and the anisotropy field changed strongly with increase of film thickness, while the saturation induction almost remained unchanged. The maximum value of GMI effect obtained about 33% for a film thickness of 1200 nm.     

Pyroelectric and piezoelectric hysteresis loops in thin PZT films with excess lead oxide

Comparative analysis of pyroelectric and piezoelectric hysteresis loops of thin PbZr_0.54Ti_0.46O₃ + 10 mol % PbO films formed under the same conditions on pyroceram and silicon substrates has been performed. The significant differences in the behavior of the parameters under study are attributed to the different character of the biaxial stress acting on a ferroelectric film from pyroceram and silicon substrates.     

Reduced exchange coupling and hysteresis loops in two-phased magnetic nanosystem

The reduced exchange coupling has been incorporated in our micromagnetic calculations for the hysteresis loops of Nd₂Fe₁₄B/α-Fe and Sm₄₀Fe₆₀/Ni₈₀Fe₂₀ multilayers. Analysis shows that nucleation and pinning fields are sensitive to the value of the interface coupling constant Jⁱ when the soft layer thickness L^s is small. Hysteresis loops have been obtained for a trilayer system with a soft α-Fe sandwiched between two Nd₂Fe₁₄B layers for different values of L^s and Jⁱ. As Jⁱ decreases, nucleation field decreases while the pinning field increases. In the meantime, the squareness of the loops is deteriorated, which results in smaller energy product. For thick soft layer the coercivity mechanism transforms from pinning to nucleation as the interface coupling decreases, and vice versa. The above calculations have been extended to a Sm₄₀Fe₆₀/Ni₈₀Fe₂₀ bilayer and compared with available experimental data. The theoretical loop is consistent with the experimental one when the value of Jⁱ is taken as 10% of the bulk one, demonstrating that the interface coupling in the experiment is far away from perfect coupling.     

Influence of eddy currents on magnetic hysteresis loops in soft magnetic materials

In this paper an attempt has been made to extend the Jiles and Atherton (J–A) quasi-static hysteresis model to describe magnetisation of a material with an alternating magnetic field. In low – industrial – and medium frequency of magnetic field it is possible to ignore the magnetic relaxation and resonance. The field penetration is assumed to be uniform through the material. The influence of eddy currents on the hysteresis loop could be considered and calculated using the method of successive reactions of eddy currents, where a reaction is an additional magnetic field, called reaction H_d, induced in the material by the eddy currents according to rot J=γ∂B/∂t where γ is the electrical conductivity. The reaction field H_d was added to the basic field H₀∝Iz_1, where I is the current intensity in the magnetising coil of z₁ number of windings. By solving the J–A equation for the magnetic field H_w=H₀+H_d it has achieved an extension of the hysteresis loop at an increased frequency of the current, caused by increased losses of the eddy currents. At the frequency f→0 Hz , the hysteresis loop approaches the shape of the quasi-static one.     

Measurement of angular-dependent hysteresis loops in perpendicular magnetic recording media

The intrinsic angular-dependent hysteresis loops in perpendicular recording media have been measured by iteratively correcting the demagnetization effect in order to maintain the internal total field at a fixed angle. Both the angle and the magnitude of the applied field are adjusted simultaneously to compensate for the demagnetization field change. Significant differences have been observed between the conventional angular-dependent hysteresis loop with a constant applied field angle and the intrinsic angular-dependent hysteresis loop with a fixed total field angle. Without demagnetization corrections, the field range in which irreversible magnetization occurs changes as a function of the field angle, whereas it remains constant if proper demagnetization field corrections are applied.     

Voltage shift of hysteresis loops of SrBi2Ta2O9 thin films under unipolar stress

Voltage shifts of hysteresis loops of metalorganic decomposition (MOD)-derived SrBi₂Ta₂O₉ (SBT) thin films, known as imprint, have been observed after exposing the thin-film capacitors to unipolar pulses. The voltage shift changes with cumulative total time at maximum voltage, following a relationship with no pulse-width dependence. The origin of the voltage shift is briefly discussed in terms of an internal bias field induced by injected electrons trapped at positive polarity. The pulse-measurement responses are greatly affected by the internal bias field, even though no imprint failure was observed up to 10¹⁰ unipolar pulses. The voltage shift and asymmetric properties can be removed easily by applying bipolar pulses of saturation amplitude. Received: 27 June 2000 / Accepted: 16 August 2000 / Published online: 5 October 2000     

Barkhausen effect in magnetic thin films: General behaviour and stationarity along the hysteresis loop

Several aspects of the Barkhausen effect can be investigated by using a measurement equipment that records the Barkhausen signal as a function of time in digital form on computer tape. Measurements on thin magnetic films containing a small number of domain walls are presented. The behaviour of the wall jumps during a reversal is investigated. During the steep part of the loop the stationarity of the signal is measured with the magnetic field as a parameter. The influence of the coercive fieldH _c and the thicknessd _m is considered and compared with results obtained by others on bulk samples.     

Similarity rules of magnetic minor hysteresis loops in Fe and Ni metals

We have studied similarity rules of quasistatic minor hysteresis loops for Fe and Ni single crystals in the wide temperature range from 10 to 600 K. Two similarity rules of M_R*/M_a*∼3/4 and W_R*/W_F*∼1/6, were found in a medium field range where irreversible movement of Bloch walls plays a crucial role for magnetization; M_a*, M_R*, W_F*, and W_R* are magnetization, remanence, hysteresis loss, and remanence work of a minor hysteresis loop. The similarity rules hold true, being almost independent of kinds of ferromagnets, applied stress, and temperature. The origin was discussed from the viewpoint of pinning effects due to dislocations as well as eddy current effects which become predominant at low temperatures for samples with low dislocation density.     

Internal stress influence on the coercivity of FeCuNbSiB thin films

Thin films of Finemet-type alloy with thickness varying from 50 to 1000 nm have been deposited by RF sputtering and annealed at temperature ranging from 150 to 450 °C. Their magnetic and structural properties have been characterized using alternating gradient field magnetometry and X-ray diffraction. In addition, the stress in the films has been measured as a function of temperature from the curvature of the wafers using a laser scanning technique.The coercive field of the films first decreases with annealing temperature due to stress relaxation, and then increases again when crystallisation begins. The optimal annealing conditions comprises between the glass transition and the crystallisation temperature.Its is observed that the coercivity of the as-deposited material is continuously decreasing as the thickness increases, following an inverse square root dependence, in relation with the stress-induced magneto-elastic contribution to the total anisotropy. By opposition, it has been found that the coercive field of devitrified and totally relaxed films is inversely proportional to film thickness. In order to explain this evolution, a model is proposed, based on random anisotropy considerations applied to thin films in which the anisotropy was considered localised in the dimension of thickness.     

Underlayer diffusion-induced enhancement of coercivity in high anisotropy FePt thin films

The L1₀ ordered FePt films have been prepared at 300 °C with a basic structure of CrRu/MgO/FePt, followed by a post-annealing process at temperatures from 200 to 350 °C. The magnetic properties and the microstructure of the films were investigated. It is found that coercivity of FePt films increases greatly from 3.57 to 9.1 kOe with the increasing annealing temperature from 200 to 350 °C. The loop slope of the M–H curves decreases with the increasing annealing temperature, which is due to the grain isolation induced by MgO underlayer diffusion during the annealing process. The underlayer diffusion could be a useful approach to prepare the FePt-based composite films for high-density recording media.     

Magnetization reversal in (0 0 1)Fe thin films studied by combining domain images and MOKE hysteresis loops

The magnetization reversal of epitaxial single-crystal Fe films has been studied by combining domain images and hysteresis loops. The reversal is quantitatively described by combining the coherent rotation model and the domain wall displacement model. The pinning energy exerted on the domain walls and the domain wall angle at the switching fields are obtained by fitting this model to experimental hysteresis loops. The field-dependent pinning energy and the domain wall angle in the reversal process, and the contributions of second-order magneto-optic effect to hysteresis loops, are revealed to be two important features of single-crystal Fe films.     

NiFeNb种子层对坡莫合金磁滞回线的影响

以NiFeNb为种子层，制备(Ni₇₉Fe₂₁)_1-xNb_{x(5nm)/(Ni79Fe21) (20nm)/Ta(3nm)系列膜，并对其颗粒大小、 磁滞回线及表面粗糙度等进行测量，探讨种子层中Nb含量x对坡莫合金磁滞回线的影响.结果 表明，以NiFeNb作种子层能更好地改善坡莫合金的微结构. Nb含量为23％时的磁滞回线有最 小的最大磁能积、矫顽力.种子层影响坡莫合金磁滞回线的一个重要原因是脱附激活能等因 素造成种子层具有不同的表面粗糙度，进而使坡莫合金具有不同的微结构和磁性能. 关键词： NiFeNb种子层 坡莫合金 磁滞回线 粗糙度}     

Loss separation for dynamic hysteresis in ferromagnetic thin films

We develop a theory for dynamic hysteresis in ferromagnetic thin films, on the basis of the phenomenological principle of loss separation. We observe that, remarkably, the theory of loss separation, originally derived for bulk metallic materials, is applicable to disordered magnetic systems under fairly general conditions regardless of the particular damping mechanism. We confirm our theory both by numerical simulations of a driven random-field Ising model, and by reexamining several experimental data reported in the literature on dynamic hysteresis in thin films. All the experiments examined and the simulations find a natural interpretation in terms of loss separation. The power losses' dependence on the driving field rate predicted by our theory fits satisfactorily all the data in the entire frequency range, thus reconciling the apparent lack of universality observed in different materials.     

Subharmonics and aperiodicity in hysteresis loops

We show that it is possible to have hysteretic behavior for magnets that does not form simple closed loops in steady state, but cycles multiple times before returning to its initial state. We show this by studying the low temperature dynamics of the 3D Edwards-Anderson spin glass. The specific multiple varies from system to system and is often quite large and increases with system size. The last result suggests that the magnetization could be aperiodic in the large system limit for some realizations of randomness. It should be possible to observe this phenomenon experimentally.     

Anomalous magnetic hysteresis loops and smallH c1 values in highT c superconductors

We have studied the hysteresis loops of RBa₂Cu₃O₇ (R=Gd, Ho and Y) and detected anomalies in some of them. The observed anomalies support a recent prediction by Ravi Kumar and Chaddah based on an extension of Bean’s model. The anomalies indicate lowH _c1 values and we have confirmed this by studying the onset of low-field hysteresis in less than 10 Oe at 77 K for these highT _c superconductors.     

Ultra large coercivity in barium ferrite thin films prepared by magnetron sputtering

Hexagonal barium ferrites were deposited onto sapphire substrates by radio frequency magnetron sputtering. The composition, microstructure, and magnetic properties of these isotropic thin films were investigated with Rutherford backscattering spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction, atomic force microscopy, magnetic force microscopy and SQUID magnetometry. The intrinsic coercivity of the films reaches about 11.5 kOe at room temperature. The mechanism of the coercivity is proposed to be nucleation in the decoupled single domain nanometer particles as shown by the characteristics of the magnetic domains and the virgin magnetization curves.