Barium ferrite films with in-plane orientation grown on silicon by pulsed laser deposition

For the first time, barium ferrite films with in-plane orientation were prepared at 700 degrees C by pulsed laser deposition technique (PLD) on Si(1 1 1) without any post-annealing. An amorphous Ba-Fe-O film is used as underlayer to facilitate the crystallization and improve the orientation of films. Sharp (1 1 0) and (2 2 0) peaks appeared in the XRD pattern. The surface morphologies observed by SEM are similar to the typical computer generated grain arrangements obtained by Suzuki et al. in their micromagnetics study. Furthermore, a particular kind of structure of film cross-section was identified in PLD for barium ferrite films. The grain size is about 3 mu m, and the coercivity is around 1500 Oe. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.