ANNEALING DEPENDENCE OF COERCIVITY, ANISOTROPY-FIELD, AND RESISTIVITY FOR AMORPHOUS COZRNB FILMS DEPOSITED BY DC PLANAR MAGNETRON SPUTTERING

Amorphous CoZrNb films have been deposited by magnetron sputtering which can greatly improve the utilization efficiency of a magnetic alloy target with high permeability. The saturation magnetization 4-pi-M(s) of the CoZrNb films was about 14 kG. The easy and hard axes of magnetization of the films were orthogonal to each other in the film plane. The coercivity H(c) in the easy and hard directions decreased from 0.9 to 0.2 Oe after annealing in a rotating dc magnetic field H(A). However, H(c) increased drastically to 20 Oe by heating at the annealing temperature T(A) of 400-degrees-C. With increasing T(A) and H(A), the anisotropy field H(k) gradually decreased from 12 to 1 Oe and the resistivity rho also decreased from 200 to 150-mu-OMEGA cm. Consequently, it was found that H(c) and rho depended strongly on T(A); and that H(k) had definite relationships with both T(A) and H(A).