Tunable in-plane uniaxial anisotropy and the magnetization reversal mechanism of patterned high-frequency soft magnetic FeTa strips

Abstract

FeTa films with thickness of 110 nm are fabricated on glass substrates by magnetron sputtering, and then a series of strips is designed on the FeTa films by conventional optical lithography and the ion beam etching method. Patterned FeTa strips show a tunable in-plane uniaxial magnetic anisotropy property in contrast with the magnetic isotropic property of as-deposited FeTa thin films. The magnetization reversal mechanism of the patterned FeTa strips is investigated via the in-plane angular dependences of magnetization and coercivity. The angular dependence of coercivity (ADC) is explained well in terms of the two-phase model, giving good quantitative agreement with the experimentally measured M-shaped ADC curve. The domain structure and spatial resolution magneto-optical Kerr effect measurement indicate that the smaller the strip width, the stronger will be the anisotropy field. Regarding the dynamic magnetic properties, a transformation from Debye dispersion spectrum for strips with weak anisotropy to natural resonance spectrum for strips with strong anisotropy is finally obtained. The tunable in-plane anisotropy fields of the FeTa strips result in tunable high-frequency soft magnetic properties by altering the strip width, indicating that patterned FeTa strips have great potential in high-frequency soft magnetic application fields.