Numerical study of the effective magnetocrystalline anisotropy and magnetostriction in polycrystalline FeGa films

The high interest in FeGa films is due to the high magnetostriction present in single crystal thin films. There is, however, significant reduction in the magnetostriction when grown using sputtering. The reduction is explained here using finite element analysis by considering the local magnetocrystalline and magnetoelastic behavior of the grains within the sample. It is shown that, if the saturation magnetostrictive constant for each grain in a polycrystalline structure is of the order of 400 ppm, this is reduced to less than 90 ppm when the crystallites are randomly orientated. Furthermore, the inherent stress due to the sample fabrication leads to an increase in the anisotropy field. This work suggests that, with low stress fabrication and aligning the in-plane orientation of the crystallites, the potential in unlocking FeGa as a thin film for sensory applications can be realised.