L10-FePt films fabricated by wet-chemical route

In this work, we have developed a method to fabricate FePt films by a combination of chemical deposition and post-annealing. Pt-doped Fe films were deposited on Pt(100 nm)/Ti(50 nm)/SiO2/Si substrate using thermal deposition and the as-deposited films were subsequently annealed from 300 °C to 800 °C under 5% H2/95% N2. FePt films were achieved through diffusion and rearrangement of Fe and Pt atoms in post-annealing process. From X-ray diffraction results, the face-centered cubic (fcc) FePt phase appeared at 300 °C and the transformation from fcc to L10 phase started at 400 °C. The L10-FePt film possessed an out-of-plane anisotropy and a coercivity of 729 kA/m after annealing at 600 °C. A further increase in annealing temperature led to lower value of coercivity, probably because of grain growth. In addition, the thickness of Pt-doped Fe films could be controlled from 150 nm to 700 nm by adjusting the amount of surfactant used. Our superconducting quantum interference device analysis showed that Pt dopant could significantly improve the chemical stability of Fe films in air.