Magnetoelastic contribution to perpendicular anisotropy in amorphous Gd-Co and Gd-Fe films

Abstract

The magnetoelastic contribution to the perpendicular anisotropy in rf sputtered amorphous Gd-Co and Gd-Fe films was investigated by the following three experiments: (1) Measurement of the magnetoelastic coupling energy, (2) measurement of the internal planar stress, and (3) the evaluation of the anisotropy due to the substrate constraint. In these experiments it was found that the magnetoelastic contribution to the perpendicular anisotropy is very sensitive to the preparation condition, especially to the substrate bias voltage V <inf xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">b</inf> during sputtering. The contribution of the magnetoelastic component to the perpendicular anisotropy is in an order of 10 <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">4</sup> erg/cc, which corresponds to 10∼30% of the total perpendicular anisotropy.