Fabrication and characterization of Fe/sub 81/Ga/sub 19/ thin films

In order to incorporate magnetostrictive actuators into microelectromechanical systems devices, thin film magnetoelastic materials must have both a high magnetostriction and a low saturation field. This work focuses on the fabrication and characterization of [110] oriented epitaxial FeGa thin films grown epitaxially on Cu on Si. The material in the bulk exhibits a large magnetostriction and in thin film form is here shown to be easily saturated in all in-plane orientations in fields under 500 Oe. Thin (less than 160 nm) FeGa films grow according to a single [110] variant on Cu[100]/Si[100]. On the contrary, thick (160 nm) films exhibit multiple [110] variants.