Ph. Zheng et al., THE EFFECT OF NITROGEN PARTITIONING ON THE MAGNETIC-PROPERTIES OF FEALN FILMS, IEEE transactions on magnetics, 32(5), 1996, pp. 4541-4543
The amount of gamma'-Fe4N phase in FeAIN films has been manipulated by
varying the substrate temperature during RF diode sputter deposition.
It was found that increasing substrate temperature leads to greater a
mounts of gamma'-Fe4N precipitation under constant nitrogen flow. It i
s shown that this precipitation correlates with low coercivities at el
evated temperatures and leads to a more negative saturation magnetostr
iction constant in the films. On the other hand, the magnetostriction
constant increases with increasing nitrogen flow at the same substrate
deposition temperature. This increase is attributed to the increasing
amount of nitrogen in the alpha-Fe phase. It is shown that the amount
of nitrogen in the alpha-Fe phase is controlling the magnetostriction
constant of the film, rather than the gamma'-Fe4N phase.