Structural, magnetic, and morphological study of cosputtered FeAl thin film grown in nonreactive environment

Fe-Al alloying is a matter of interest because of its technological importance and many applications. Different growth conditions may lead to different results, ie, formation of various phases. These phases may be magnetic or nonmagnetic in nature. Cosputtering of Fe and Al with magnetron-sputtering setup provides us with a good option of alloying and to study the various phase formations. As, yet now researchers studied the alloying through cosputtering process only in oxygen environment, so a study in nonreactive environment was inevitable and interesting. Therefore, the authors went for Fe-Al thin-film synthesis using the magnetron sputtering in argon environment. Hence, this paper discusses the Fe and Al alloy formation in argon environment and annealed the samples at different temperatures for different time durations so as to allow various phase formations. The samples were characterized with grazing incidence X-ray diffraction (GIXRD), grazing incidence X-ray reflectivity (GIXRR), magneto-optical Kerr effect (MOKE), and atomic force microscopy (AFM) techniques so as to study structural, morphological, and magnetic properties. The results confirm that cosputtering provides better chances of alloying and also supports formation of various stable phases in comparison with other available techniques.