• Belova, Lyubov

Abstract

<jats:title>ABSTRACT</jats:title><jats:p>We have fabricated by pulse laser deposition very thin (∼5-7 nm) and thick (∼27-408 nm) films of composition Fe<jats:sub>66</jats:sub>B<jats:sub>24</jats:sub>Nb<jats:sub>4</jats:sub>Ni<jats:sub>6</jats:sub> on silicon and quartz substrates respectively, and studied their magnetic and magneto-optic properties at room temperature. We find that the thicker films on silicon can be tuned by appropriate thermal annealing to exploit soft magnetic characteristics with low H<jats:sub>C</jats:sub>, and high M<jats:sub>S</jats:sub> values. The magnetic hysteretic loops of the as-deposited thicker films on silicon substrates show two interesting characteristics: 1) increase in the coercivity with the film thickness and 2) the onset of a two stage process during the approach to magnetic saturation. The initial in-plane characteristic of the hysteresis loop is followed by a linear anisotropic behavior between remanence and saturation- that changes into square soft-magnetic loops on decreasing the film thickness. By suitable annealing the intrinsic strain disappears at relatively low temperatures (≤200 oC); the thicker films can be tailored to exhibit a simple soft-magnetic square loop with low H<jats:sub>C</jats:sub>. The ∼5-7 nm films deposited on glass are transparent and have been investigated for their magneto-optic properties using Faraday rotation (FR) measurement technique. Very high values of FR in the range 4-20 deg/µm almost linearly dependent on the wavelength of light in the range 405-611 nm are observed. The observed high values of Faraday rotation over a wide range of wavelength of light are useful for the applications as magneto-optic sensors in the UV to visible range.</jats:p>

Topics

• impedance spectroscopy
• thin film
• glass
• glass
• anisotropic
• Silicon
• annealing
• pulsed laser deposition
• coercivity