Structural and magnetic properties of Co2Cr0.6Fe0.4Al thin films epitaxially grown on GaAs substrates with MgO interlayer

The structural and magnetic properties of Co2Cr0.6Fe0.4Al (CCFA) thin films epitaxially grown on GaAs substrates by sputtering were investigated. The CCFA film directly grown on GaAs showed a cube-on-cube crystallographic relation, while it was rotated by 45° in the (001) plane when a thin MgO layer was inserted between the CCFA and GaAs. Both samples showed strong magnetic anisotropy, in which a uniaxial anisotropy with an easy axis of [110]GaAs or [1–10]GaAs dominated with a slight cubic anisotropy having easy axes of 〈110〉CCFA superimposed. The uniaxial anisotropy constants were approximately 1.6 times as large as the cubic anisotropy constants for both samples.