Thickness dependent enhancement of damping in Co2FeAl/β-Ta thin films

• In the present work Co2FeAl (CFA) thin films were deposited by ion beam sputtering on Si (100) substrates at the optimized deposition temperature of 300°C. A series of CFA films with different thickness (tCFA ); 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18 and 20 nm were prepared and all samples were capped with a 5 nm thick b-Ta layer. The thickness dependent static and dynamic properties of the films were studied by SQUID magnetometry, in-plane as well as out-of-plane broadband VNA-FMR measurements and angle dependent cavity FMR measurements. The saturation magnetization and the coercive field were found to be weakly thickness dependent and lie in the range 900 – 950 kA/m and 0.53 – 0.87 kA/m, respectively. The effective damping parameter ( αeff) extracted from in-plane and out-of-plane FMR results reveal a 1/tCFA dependence, the values for the in-plane αeff being larger due to two-magnon scattering (TMS). The origin of the αeff thickness dependence is spin pumping into the non-magnetic b-Ta layer and in case of the in-plane  αeff also a thickness dependent TMS contribution. From the out-of-plane FMR results, it was possible to disentangle the different contributions to αeff   and to the extract values for the intrinsic Gilbert damping (αG ) and the effective spin-mixing conductance (g_eff^↑↓ ) of the CFA/ b-Ta interface, yielding αG=1.1X10-3 and g_eff^↑↓=2.90x1019 m-2.

Subject headings

NATURVETENSKAP  -- Fysik -- Den kondenserade materiens fysik (hsv//swe)

NATURAL SCIENCES  -- Physical Sciences -- Condensed Matter Physics (hsv//eng)

TEKNIK OCH TEKNOLOGIER  -- Materialteknik (hsv//swe)

ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY  -- Materials Engineering (hsv//eng)

Keyword

Magnetization dynamics

magnetic thin films

Gilbert damping

ferromagnetic resonance

Physics with spec. in Atomic, Molecular and Condensed Matter Physics

Fysik med inriktning mot atom- molekyl- och kondenserande materiens fysik

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

art (subject category)