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Magnetic properties of sputtered CoCr films and magneto-optics of rare earth-transition metal multilayers

University of British Columbia

The goal of the thesis is to make contributions to the development of two new technologies for data storage: perpendicular recording and magneto-optic recording. CoCr and rare earth-transition metal multilayers are the most suitable media for perpendicular recording and magneto-optic recording technologies, respectively. In part A of the thesis, magnetic properties of CoCr thin films produced by dc magnetron sputtering are studied for various deposition conditions. Dielectric constants and extraordinary Hall effect are also studied to provide information complementary to magnetic properties. In part B, new methods are developed for theoretical analysis of the magneto-optics of rare earth-transition metal multilayers, which can be used to optimize the readout of the recording system. Part A For dc magnetron sputtered CoCr films the perpendicular and parallel magnetic coercivities are found to be mainly controlled by the substrate temperature during film growth. Substrate temperatures between 180 and 300 C are necessary to fabricate CoCr thin films for recording media. Films produced in this manner have magnetic anisotropy constants ranging from —1.0 to +0.5 10⁶erg/cc. The magnetic anisotropy has a complicated dependence on a large number of deposition parameters and can be best controlled by the dc sputtering power and the target-to-substrate distance. Based on microstructural analysis film properties are interpreted in terms of the adatom diffusion during film growth. It is found that high adatom mobility and low deposition rate promote positive magnetic anisotropy. The dielectric constants measured by ellipsometry are found to depend on the film thickness because of the change in film morphology during film growth. The effects of asymmetric sputtering are analyzed, and the relationship between the extraordinary Hall effect and the magnetic properties is investigated. Part B The 4x4 matrix method proposed by Lin-Chung and Teitler[P. J. Lin-Chung and S. Teitler, J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 1 703(1984)] is applied to the magneto-optics of the rare earth-transition metal multilayer system. Based on a plane wave model, the above method enables one to calculate the sensitivity of the readout to the layer thicknesses as well as effects of oblique angle of incidence, anisotropy in the nonmagnetic part of the dielectric constants and misalignment of the magnetization. Finally, an improved model is presented to take into account the fact that the reading laser is a strongly focused beam instead of a plane wave. This new model is used to optimize the magneto-optic multilayer system. When the focal spot size of the reading laser beam is less than about three wavelengths, significantly different results are obtained from the focused beam and the plane wave models.

Text

2010-09-30

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http://hdl.handle.net/2429/28858

Physics

University of British Columbia

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