Electrochemical deposition of CoCu/Cu multilayers: Structural and magnetic properties as a function of non-magnetic layer thickness

Abstract

Electrochemical deposition of CoCu/Cu multilayers was performed on titanium substrates from a single bath as a function of the Cu layer thicknesses. The deposition potentials were selected as -1.5 V for the magnetic layers and -0.3 V for the non-magnetic layers with respect to the saturated calomel electrode. The current-time transients were obtained during the deposition process, and the Co layer deposition and capacitive transients were calculated. On the basis of structural analysis, the multilayers were found to be polycrystalline with both Co and Cu layers adopting the face-centered cubic structure. The calculated lattice parameters of the multilayers slightly increase from 0.3585 to 0.3615 nm with increase in the Cu layer thickness, which is consistent with the bulk value of Cu. The inter-planar distance of the peaks of the multilayers is closer to that of Cu (d(111) = 0.2087 nm) and Co (d(111) = 0.2046 nm), and they become close to that of bulk Cu with increasing Cu layer thickness. In magnetic measurements, the magnetization decreases from 156 to 44 emu/cm(3) depending on the Cu layer thickness. Furthermore, the coercivity of the multilayers increases from 20 to 140 Oe. These values show that the magnetic behaviour of the multilayers lie between those of soft and hard magnetic materials, but the multilayer having 2.5 nm Cu layer thickness shows hard magnetic property. For the CoCu(4 nm)/Cu(0.7 nm) multilayer, the magnetoresistance measurement shows 5.5 % giant magnetoresistance (GMR).