STRUCTURE OF SPUTTER-DEPOSITED PT FE AND CR/FE MULTILAYERS/

Conversion electron Mossbauer spectroscopy (CEMS) and X-ray diffractio n (XRD) have been used to investigate the structure of Pt/Fe and Cr/Fe multilayers deposited by magnetron sputtering. The Cr/Fe samples cons isted of four samples prepared under Ar sputtering pressures of 1.3, 3 .0, 5.0, and 10.0 mT, all with the same multilayer structure of 3.5 nm Cr/2.5 nm Fe, repeated 35 times onto c-Si wafer substrates. The quali ty of the interfaces between Cr and Fe is clearly degraded with increa sing sputter pressure, as seen by changes in the relative intensities of four magnetic subspectra in the CEMS acid the gradual appearance of a single-line resonance similar to Fe in solution in Cr. The low-angl e XRD superlattice peaks also disappear with increasing sputter pressu re, while the high-angle XRD shows a tendency for loss of the preferre d (110) texture. Two films of Pt/Fe were deposited epitaxially onto Mg O single crystals with bilayer periods of 1.3 nm and 2.6 nm and total thickness of 300 nm each. A transition from fcc-PtFe with near-perpend icular magnetic anisotropy to a bcc-Fe/fcc-PtFe mixture with in-plane magnetic texture is observed by CEMS for the factor of two increase in bilayer period.