Low temperature Pulsed Laser Deposition of highly textured CoFe thin films

Nowadays, the wide number of technological applications of magnetic materials requires not only a strict control on their chemical and physical properties, but also an always increasing capability to properly tailor their magnetic properties in order to optimize the devices performance. Among the ferromagnetic materials, the CoFe alloy is one of the most studied due to the rich phase diagram that arises from the full miscibility of the two elements in the whole concentration range allowing the magnetic properties to be suitably tailored, once provided that a precise control over stoichiometry and structure is ensured. [1, 2] In this work [3], we demonstrate that, by properly choosing the Pulsed Laser Deposition process parameters it is possible to obtain high quality continuous Fe 50 Co 50 thin films on MgO (100) substrates, characterized by low coercivity, high saturation magnetization and high degree of crystallographic order even at T dep = 25 °C, and different growth orientations easily obtained by slightly changing the substrate temperature. This result demonstrates the possibility to use the PLD, already considered the key technique for the deposition of complex oxide films, to fabricate high-quality heterostructures and multilayers combining oxide and metal materials in one single deposition run.