In-situ Growth of Ultrathin Magnetic Films and Tuning the Magnetic Properties by Ion-sculpting

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates in-situ growth and ion-sculpting techniques to engineer magnetic anisotropy in ultrathin films, using cost-effective methods and advanced characterization to enhance magnetic properties for spintronic applications.

Contribution

It introduces low-energy ion-beam etching and unconventional deposition methods for tailoring magnetic anisotropy in thin films, with in-situ analysis and synchrotron techniques.

Findings

Ion-sculpting effectively modifies surface morphology.

Unconventional methods enhance uniaxial magnetic anisotropy.

In-situ techniques provide genuine insights into magnetic properties.

Abstract

Magnetic anisotropy is a key parameter of magnetic materials as it decides the response in the presence of an external magnetic field. The artificial tailoring of magnetic anisotropy by manipulating surface and interface morphology is attracting widespread interest for its application in spintronic and magnetic memory devices. In this perspective, the primary focus of this thesis has been inducing and tailoring magnetic anisotropy in thin film-based systems via the engineering of structure and surface/interfacial morphology. For this purpose, instead of multistep, expensive lithographic techniques, we have utilized low-energy IBE as a handy, cost-effective, and useful tool for producing magnetic nanostructures and tailoring its surface structure, morphology and magnetic anisotropy. Furthermore, we have also proposed various new and unconventional methods (oblique angle deposition on the rippled substrate, sequential deposition-erosion) for enhancement of UMA and proved its effectiveness via experiments. We have performed most of the present thesis work in-situ utilizing a UHV chamber to get genuine characteristics and understand their interdependencies. However, advanced synchrotron-based techniques such as GISAXS and NFS were also utilized to complement the in-situ observations.