Abstract
Ga ion irradiation was used to modify the microstructures and magnetic properties of Co/Pd multilayers and also to fabricate patterned media. A decrease in the diffraction peak at low-angle XRD showed that the regular interface between Co and Pd layers was blurred by ion irradiation. The effective perpendicular magnetic anisotropy energy, Keff, decreased from 1.7×106erg/cm3 for as-grown film to 0.4 ×106 erg/cm3 for irradiated film at 2×1015 ions/cm2. The easy axis of magnetization changed from perpendicular to in-plane atthe highest ion dose (5×1015 ions/cm2). An MFM imageshowed that the domain width gradually decreased with increasing ion dose, which corresponds to a decrease in the perpendicular magnetic anisotropy. Sharp boundaries between perpendicular and in-plane regions are also observed in patterned films, which indicates that localized magnetically patterns can be engineered by Ga ion irradiation.
