A Study of Magnetic Field Annealing on Microstructures and Magnetic Properties of Nanocomposite Sm-Co/Co Films

A magnetic field annealing is firstly used for nanostructured Sm-Co/Co films, prepared by magnetron sputtering method. The effects of magnetic field annealing on single-layered Sm-Co films are different from those on multi-layered Sm-Co/Co films. A detailed analysis of microstructures and magnetic properties is made by means of HRTEM, Auger electron spectroscopy, XRD and Physical Property Measurement System (PPMS). From magnetic properties and microstructure analysis, it was confirmed that these differences originate from the effects of magnetic field annealing on crystallization behavior of the films. The relationship between magnetic properties and microstructures explains a different demagnetization process of single-layered and multilayered films. For the single-layered Sm-Co films, magnetic-field-annealing makes the main phases change from $CaCu_5/ to Zn_2Th_{17}$ structure, resulting in a decrease of coercivity. The results show that the magnetic-field-annealing is useful to improve the properties of nanostructured Sm-Co(30 nm)/Co(10 nm) films, which ascribe to improving the pinning effectiveness in coercivity mechanism and decreasing the magnetostatic interaction of films. A very high coercivity about 0.7 T was obtained from nanoscaled multi-layered Sm-Co(30 nm)-/Co(10 nm) films.