Electrodeposited CoNiFe alloy thin films for magnetic recording

Alloy thin films of ternary system Co-Ni-Fe and binary systems Co-Fe, Co-Ni and Ni-Fe consisting of similar to 50 nm grains have been deposited by a simple and industrially viable technique of electrodeposition in galvanostatic mode on ITO-coated glass. Bath composition and current density have been varied to prepare films of different compositions and thus, in turn, obtain suitable composition for better magnetic properties. Further, an attempt has been made to deposit films in the presence of Mg2+ in the bath and to study its linkage with the magnetic properties, i.e., saturation magnetic flux density, B-S, and coercivity, H-C. Our results clearly demonstrate that addition of Mg2+ ions in the bath helps in increasing the B-S,considerably.