Effect of substrate bias and magnetic annealing on soft magnetic properties of rf-sputtered Fe₄₉Co₄₉V₂ films

Fe₄₉Co₄₉V₂ films were deposited by rf sputtering with and without substrate bias. All the as-deposited films deposited with or without substrate bias exhibit high coercivity of ∼200 Oe. The effect of magnetic annealing on soft magnetic properties was pronounced for films deposited with a substrate bias of 300 V. Excellent uniaxial anisotropy films with easy axis coercivity of 10 Oe were obtained for bias-sputtered and magnetic annealed films. X-ray diffraction examination and energy dispersive analysis of x-ray suggest that the improvement of soft magnetic properties by bias sputtering and magnetic annealing is associated with the relaxation of film stress and the recrystallization during magnetic annealing and variation of the composition of film by substrate bias. The dependence of coercivity on grain size D of these films appears to follow the 1/D law. © 2002 American Institute of Physics.