Magneto-optical investigation of Fe/Zr and Fe/Zr/Fe thin-film systems

Results on the investigation of magnetic and magneto-optical properties nanocrystalline Fe/Zr and Fe/Zr/Fe thin film systems are presented. The examined samples were prepared by DC magnetron sputtering technique under a base pressure of less than 10⁻⁸ Torr and an argon gas pressure of 1×10⁻³ Torr. The structural investigations of the samples were performed by X-ray diffraction analysis. The hysteresis loops and spectral dependencies of the transverse Kerr effect (TKE) for the 1.4 – 4.5 eV incident light energy range were measured employing the magneto-optical magnetometer and the magneto-optical spectrometer, respectively. The influence of the Zr layer thickness on the magnetic properties of the Fe/Zr samples was discovered. It was found that in the trilayers, the saturation field, Hs, along the easy axis of the magnetization oscillates as a function of tzr. This result was explained by the presence of the exchange coupling between ferromagnetic layers through the Zr spacer and its oscillatory behavior with changing tzr. The TKE spectra, obtained for all samples, were revealed to be identical but the values of TKE depend on the thickness of both the magnetic and nonmagnetic layers.