Microstructural studies of metal/ferrite composite thin films

Abstract

Metal/ferrite composite thin films were prepared by a reactive sputtering method to improve the saturation magnetization (M-s,). The M-s of the thin films increased with increasing substrate temperature and this was attributed to the precipitation of a metal phase in the films. X-ray diffraction (XRD), energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS), and convergent beam electron diffraction (CBED) analyses confirmed that the composite thin films were composed of FexCo1-x (x approximate to 0.33) alloys with a BCC structure and FexCo1-xO4 (x approximate to 0.77) with a cubic spinel structure. Copyright (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.