Magnetic Properties of Ultrathin Cobalt films on Si substrates

Magnetism in ultra-thin films has attracted many research efforts because of its practical applications in solid state devices. One of the most interesting properties of this area is that, contrary to the magnetism in bulk materials, it is possible to manipulate the magnetism by controlling the thickness of the sample. In this experimental work, we studied the variation of remanent and saturation magnetizations as well as the coercive fields for Cobalt films grown by Sputter deposition. The films were fabricated with thicknesses between 1 to 10nm and were characterized via VSM measurements. At 1.6nm results showed a deviation for the saturation magnetization and a significant change in coercive fields.