Magnetic and Low Temperature Electrical Properties of Ni/Fe Multilayers

The magnetic multilayers, [Ni(100nm)/Fe(100nm)]_n; n = 1, 2, 3 and 5 were deposited by electron beam evaporation method, under high vacuum at 473 K and investigated for structure, morphology, magnetization and low temperature electrical resistivity from 4.2K to 300K. The structure and grain sizes were determined from the X-ray diffraction (XRD) studies. Microstructures of the films have been examined on the Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) images and the surface roughness was determined by atomic force microscope (AFM). The magnetization as a function of field was measured using vibrating sample magnetometer (VSM). The coercivity and remanent magnetization were found to be increasing with increasing number of bilayers and this is ascribed to the magnetic hardening of the films with increasing number of bilayers, n. The resistivity increased with increase of n at all temperatures of interest. The residual resistivity ratio (RRR) and the temperature coefficient of resistivity (TCR) were determined. The power law variation of resistivity with temperature was established. For temperature, T, above 80K, the resistivity exponent was found to be slightly more than unity and it was between 3 and 5 for temperature below 30 K. The contributions to resistivity for T above 80K were expected to be largely due to electron-phonon and electron-magnon scatterings and for T below 30K they were expected to be due to electronelectron and electron-defect scattering. This is for the first time that a set of [Fe/Ni] multilayers in the present configurations were probed for structure, magnetic and low temperature electrical resistivity and the power laws for the resistivity variation with temperature have been established.

並列關鍵字

Multilayers ； Magnetization ； Coercive Field ； Resistivity

國際替代計量

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