Pulsed laser deposition of SmCo thin films for MEMS applications

Thin films and coatings of permanent magnetic materials have found extensive applications in a wide range of technological domains. SmCo thin films show tremendous potential for use as permanent magnetic films on account of their high anisotropy fields, moderately high saturation magnetization and high curie temperature. In the present research, SmCo thin films have been deposited on single crystal Si(1 0 0) substrates using pulsed laser deposition technique. The films were deposited at a fixed substrate temperature of 400 °C by varying the number of pulses, in order to get thin films of different thicknesses. Effect of laser pulses on the crystal structure evolution, composition of the deposited material, film thicknesses and hence the magnetic properties have been investigated. X-ray diffraction analysis was performed in order to determine the crystal structure of the deposited films. The compositional analysis was performed by using energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy. A slight variation in the Sm and Co contents was observed in the thin films grown by varying the laser shots. The microstructural information of the thin films was obtained by using a scanning electron microscope. The magnetic and electrical parameters were investigated by using vibrating sample magnetometer and two point probe respectively. The results show hard magnetic and conducting nature of all deposited thin films except sample 1 due to poor crystallinity.