Perpendicular magnetization in Ni/Pt multilayers

Abstract

Ni/Pt multilayers have been prepared by electron beam evaporation under ultrahigh vacuum conditions. All the samples were grown at 300 K. The t(Ni) was in the range 0.7–2.1 nm and t(Pt) was fixed at 2 nm. The magnetization and the Curie temperature for these samples are lower than that of bulk Ni. For the samples with t(Ni)≤1 nm perfect rectangular hysteresis loops are obtained along the film normal in the low temperature range (5 to 70 K) indicating the presence of a strong uniaxial anisotropy. The coercivity for the sample with t(Ni)=0.7 nm at 5 K is as high as 4.7 kOe.