Fabrication and anisotropy investigations of patterned epitaxial magnetic films using a lift-off process

We demonstrate a technique to fabricate patterned epitaxial magnetic films using a lift-off process and investigate the magnetic properties using the magneto-optical Kerr effect (MOKE). 150 mum epitaxial face-centred-cubic squares are patterned and a method to extract the anisotropy constant from the hard axis switching field is presented. The maximum switching field on the hard axis can be read easily from the transverse magnetization loop and a second-order magneto-optical effect present in these thin-film systems is used to extract transverse and longitudinal magnetization hysteresis loops from single-longitudinal MOKE measurements. The anisotropy values obtained for the lift-off elements are consistent with those of nonpatterned continuous films of the same material so indicating that the lift-off process presented here has no adverse effects on the epitaxial growth. (C) 2003 American Institute of Physics.