Magnetic anisotropy and damping in epitaxial Fe-Co-Ni binary and ternary alloy thin films

We deposited epitaxial thin films of typical ferromagnetic Fe-Co-Ni alloys with various compositions on MgO (001) single crystal substrate by sputtering and then systematically investigated their magnetic anisotropy and magnetic damping constant alpha. The results showed that the magneto-crystalline anisotropy constant K-1 roughly reproduced the composition dependence of bulk single crystals, but the region with K-1 > 0 extended further on the Ni-rich side compared to the bulk's. Additionally, uniaxial magnetic anisotropy on the order of 10(3) erg/cc was manifested in all the films. Regarding alpha, larger values were observed on the Ni-rich alloys, with a tendency to decrease with the addition of Fe or Co. Furthermore, the compositional dependence of alpha was found to replicate the behavior predicted by the Kambersk & yacute; model.