On the in-plane uniaxial anisotropy formation by using Fe–Co–Zr–N films: A theoretical and experimental investigation

Abstract In the present paper a simple theoretical approach for the in-plane uniaxial anisotropy evolution in thin films is introduced. In order to show, what are the conditions for a uniaxial anisotropy formation during annealing a ferromagnetic film in an external static magnetic field, a Hamiltonian, i.e., mean energy balances were established with introducing their annealing temperature dependence. At this point, a 1-dimesional chain-like arrangement of Fe and Co elements for an “isotropic” and uniaxial anisotropy state for the numerical computation was assumed. It was shown that a critical energy and annealing temperature (temperature threshold) can be attained from which a uniaxial anisotropy arises. Comparatively, calculations according to the Neel theory delivered the activation energy for inducing a uniaxial anisotropy. The experimental verification of the calculations, by using Fe 40 Co 37 Zr 11 N 12 films which were produced by reactive magnetron sputtering, yielded the activation energy of about 250 meV. Annealing temperatures above 473 K (200 °C) enabled marked uniaxial anisotropies. This correlated with the numerical quantum mechanical estimations which yielded a critical annealing temperature of approximately 449 K (176 °C). The calculated critical energy of 243 meV was in a good agreement with the verified experiments if one assumes a short range order of at least 10 ferromagnetic atoms in line (5Fe+5Co) for computation.