Strong uniaxial magnetic anisotropy in CoFe films on obliquely sputtered Ru underlayer

Co90Fe10 films with an in-plane uniaxial magnetic anisotropy have been grown on an obliquely sputtered thin Ru underlayer. The anisotropy field can be increased up to 200 Oe. The hysteresis curves show a very high squareness in the easy axis direction and almost no hysteresis in the hard axis direction, suggesting that the induced uniaxial anisotropy is uniform throughout the films. The switching characteristics of the nanoelements fabricated from the films by e-beam lithography are also investigated. There is no degradation of the magnetic anisotropy after the annealing and lithographical process.