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To utilize highly spin-polarized Heusler alloys in practical spintronic devices, the realization of highly textured and structurally ordered polycrystalline thin films under limited annealing temperatures (TA) is critical. Compared to the natural [110]-texture of Heusler alloys, the [001]-texture is considered to be favorable for current-perpendicular-to-plane giant magnetoresistance devices due to the reduced lattice misfit with the face-centered-cubic (fcc) Ag spacer layers. In this study, we fabricated [001]-oriented polycrystalline Co2FeGa0.5Ge0.5 (CFGG) Heusler alloy films epitaxially grown on a [001]-oriented polycrystalline Ag buffer layer on thermally oxidized Si substrate, and the microstructure of the [001]-oriented Ag/CFGG bilayer film was investigated in detail. The [001]-oriented Ag films were obtained by introducing N2 into Ar during the sputtering process. The [001]-oriented CFGG films exhibited smooth interfaces, the B2 ordering, and a high saturation magnetization close to the theoretical value under a relatively low annealing at TA = 300 ℃, which are critical for industrial applications such as read heads of hard disk drives.

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• Creative Commons BY Attribution 4.0 International
  

Keyword: Heusler alloy, giant magnetoresistance, thin film, textured growth, surfactant, read head, magnetic recording

Date published: 2024-09-28

Publisher: AIP Publishing

Journal:

• Journal of Applied Physics (ISSN: 00218979) vol. 136 issue. 12

Funding:

• Japan Society for the Promotion of Science 21H01608
• Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology JPJ011438

Manuscript type: Author's version (Accepted manuscript)

MDR DOI: https://doi.org/10.48505/nims.4946

First published URL: https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0218648

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Updated at: 2024-11-13 08:31:43 +0900

Published on MDR: 2024-11-13 08:31:43 +0900