Structural and magnetic properties of Ru/Ni multilayers

K Mergia (1) , A Tomou (2) , I Panagiotopoulos (2) , F Ott (3)

1 Institute of Nuclear Technology and Radiation Protection
2 Dept. of Materials Science and Engineering
3 LLB - UMR 12 - Laboratoire Léon Brillouin

Ru/Ni multilayers of different Ni thickness have been fabricated using magnetron sputtering. The structure of the multilayers has been determined by grazing incidence X-ray diffraction and X-ray reflectivity and their magnetic properties by magnetization and polarized neutron reflectivity measurements. The presence of Ru leads to the formation of a hexagonal Ni structure within interfacial layer ~1 nm above each Ru layer, while the rest of the Ni layer relaxes to the equilibrium fcc structure. The hcp Ni interfacial layer has a substantially increased cell volume is ferromagnetic with an atomic magnetic moment that increases with Ni layer thickness but remains lower than the value predicted from ab initio calculations.

Mots clés: hcp Ni; Ru/Ni multilayers; thin magnetic films; polarized neutron reflectivity PACS: 75.70.Cn Magnetic properties of interfaces ( multilayers; superlattices; heterostructures ); 68.65.Ac Multilayers; 61.05.cp X-ray diffraction; 61.05.fj Neutron reflectometry; 61.05.cm X-ray reflectometry ( surfaces; interfaces; films )

K Mergia, A Tomou, I Panagiotopoulos, F Ott. Structural and magnetic properties of Ru/Ni multilayers. Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics, 2011, 44 (7), pp.75001. ⟨10.1088/0022-3727/44/7/075001⟩. ⟨hal-00594971⟩