Abstract
We investigated the effect of the sputtering conditions on the properties of Ni80Fe20 and Ir22Mn78 films prepared by UHV-ICP(Inductively Coupled Plasma) magnetron sputtering system. Higher Ar pressure, lower cathode power and longer target-substrate distance for RF sputtering of IrMn resulted in larger exchange bias field for the structure glass/Ta(5nm)/NiFe(5nm)/IrMn(t_<IM>nm)/Ta(5nm). X-ray diffraction measurements showed that the exchange bias field depended on the spacing of lattice planes of IrMn. AFM observations showed that smaller coercivity of NiFe/IrMn were obtained for smaller grain diameter of IrMn. We obtained the maximum interfacial exchange coupling energy of 0.124 erg/cm^2 for t_<IM> of 5nm. The blocking temperature of 260 and 320℃ were obtained for t_<IM> of 5 and 12.5nm respectively.
