Effects of annealing and conformal alumina passivation on anisotropy and hysteresis of magneto-optical properties of cobalt slanted columnar thin films

Abstract We present magneto-optical dielectric tensor data of cobalt and cobalt oxide slanted columnar thin films obtained by vector magneto-optical generalized ellipsometry. Room-temperature hysteresis magnetization measurements were performed in longitudinal and polar Kerr geometries on samples prior to and after a heat treatment process with and without a conformal Al 2 O 3 passivation coating. The samples have been characterized by generalized ellipsometry, scanning electron microscopy, and Raman spectroscopy in conjuncture with density functional theory. We observe strongly anisotropic hysteresis behaviors, which depend on the nanocolumn and magnetizing field orientations. We find that deposited cobalt films that have been exposed to heat treatment and subsequent atmospheric oxidation into Co 3 O 4 , when not conformally passivated, reveal no measurable magneto-optical properties while cobalt films with passivation coatings retain highly anisotropic magneto-optical properties.