Surface morphology and magnetic properties of evaporated Fe/Si and Fe/glass thin films

• DOI: 10.1007/s00339-015-9173-5
• Publication Date: 2015-04-20T08:28:12Z
• Authors: M. Mebarki; A. Layadi; L. Kerkache; N. Tiercelin; V. Preobrazhensky; P. Pernod
• Keywords: 0103 physical sciences; 01 natural sciences

A series of Fe thin films have been deposited by thermal evaporation onto glass and Si substrates. The Fe thicknesses, t, are in the 76–431 nm range. We report experimental results on the surface morphology and the magnetic properties of these samples. The surface morphology has been studied by means of the atomic force microscopy technique. Hysteresis curves were obtained by means of the vibrating sample magnetometer (VSM) setup. The VSM experiments were done at two temperatures (room temperature and −130 °C). We investigated the effect of thickness t, substrates and deposition rate v (0.3–13.7 A/s) on the surface roughness, the coercive field and the squareness. A correlation between the structural and the magnetic properties is established.