Effect of Thickness on Magnetic Dipolar and Exchange Interactions in SmCo/FeCo/SmCo Thin Films

SmCo/FeCo/SmCo trilayer was deposited with two different thickness configurations for soft phase (FeCo); 50 nm/10 nm/50 nm and 50 nm/25 nm/50 nm were deposited on Si (111) substrate and Ta (50 nm) seed layer by RF magnetron sputtering in a pressure, p, of 30 - 35 m Torr. After deposition the films were annealed under Ar atmosphere at temperature T equal to 923 and 973 for different times followed by quenching in water. X-ray diffraction patterns were obtained to identified phase presents and calculate average crystallite size. To study the effect of configuration thickness in soft phases, DC magnetic measurements were carried out; the measurements were done in the temperature interval of 300 - 50 K. Hysteresis loops collected at low temperatures exposed an increment in coercivity with the decrease of T and at same time, presented a “knee” in the second quadrant of the demagnetization curve, which suggests that the inter-layer exchange coupling becomes less effective, being more evident for sample with 50 nm/25 nm/50 nm thickness. Moreover, δM (H) plots were calculated from magnetic measurements at three different temperatures, T, equal to 300, 150 and 50 K, which corroborates that the dipolar interactions became stronger when thickness of soft phases increases. Finally, the thickness effect is attributed to the SmCo5 phase magnetocrystalline anisotropy constant, which is responsible for the exchange coupling length.