Control of the Degree of Out-of-Plane Anisotropy of CoFe/Tb Multilayer by Applying an External Inplane Field During Film Deposition

Abstract

We investigated the out-of-plane anisotropy of Co(50)Fe(50)/Tb multilayer film with changing the thickness of Tb layer and applying an inplane filed of 200 Oe during film deposition. A strong out-of-plane anisotropy was found only for the multilayer with small thickness of Tb layer (t(Tb) = 1 nm) and was suppressed significantly by the application of an inplane magnetic field of 200 Oe during deposition, resulting in an inplane anisotropy. It was also found that the application of the magnetic field caused the enhanced intermixing between CoFe and Tb layers to form Co-Tb and Fe-Tb alloys at the interface of the layers. While the origin of the out-of-plane anisotropy and the change of the out-of-plane to inplane anisotropy with the application of inplane field of 200 Oe are not understood completely, it seems that there is a strong correlation between the out-of-plane anisotropy and the formation of the alloys and the stress at the interface.