Investigation of magnetic coupling in sputtered epitaxial Fe/Cr and Co/Cu wedged structures

Abstract

We explore the magnetic interlayer exchange coupling in single-crystalline Fe/Cr and Co/Cu wedged multilayers prepared by magnetron sputtering on two orientations of MgO-(100) and (110). Structural examination shows that high quality epitaxial films are obtained in both systems using seeded epitaxy growth techniques. Oscillatory interlayer coupling is observed in Cr-wedged samples grown on both MgO(100) and MgO(100) with similarly long oscillation periods of ∼-18 Å. These results are comparable to earlier work for molecular beam epitaxy and sputter-deposited epitaxial Fe/Cr structures. Long-period oscillatory coupling is also observed in sputtered Co/Cu(110) for the Cu-wedged structures. Studies of the dependence of magnetic coupling on the thickness of the magnetic layers for fixed Cr layer thickness provides no evidence of any nonmonotonic dependence. © 1996 American Institute of Physics.