Tuning the magnetic properties of Fe50−xMnxPt50 thin films

The magnetic and structural properties of highly ordered (S ∼ 0.82) epitaxial Fe50−xMnxPt50 thin films were investigated. L10 Fe50−xMnxPt50 (x = 0, 6, 9, 12 and 15) thin films with a constant thickness of 45 nm were prepared by co-sputtering Fe50Pt50 and Mn50Pt50 on to MgO (100) single crystal substrate. We find a significant increase in the coercivity for FeMnPt thin films. We have shown that this increase coincides with a tetragonal distortion, while a recent first principles study of Mn doped FePt showed the sub lattice ordering of ferromagnetically aligned Mn atoms would lead to increase in magnetic anisotropy in the FeMnPt ternary alloy system with fixed Pt concentration. At x = 12 the coercivity has increased by 46.4% relative to that of Fe50Pt50 (x = 0). We attribute the increase in coercivity to the tetragonal distortion as the experimentally determined c/a ratio is larger than the expected c/a ratio for ferromagnetically ordered Mn atoms in the sublattice at the concentration x = 12. High temperature deposition and high temperature annealing was applied to achieve large coercivity in Mn doped FePt as these process lead to the observed tetragonal distortion.