Effect of Thermal Annealing on Boron Diffusion, Micro-structural, Electrical and Magnetic properties of Laser Ablated CoFeB Thin Films

Abstract

We report on Boron diffusion and subsequent crystallization of Co${}_{40}$Fe${}_{40}$B${}_{20}$ (CoFeB) thin films on SiO${}_2$/Si(001) substrate using pulsed laser deposition. Secondary ion mass spectroscopy reveals Boron diffusion at the interface in both amorphous and crystalline phase of CoFeB. High-resolution transmission electron microscopy reveals a small fraction of nano-crystallites embedded in the amorphous matrix of CoFeB. However, annealing at 400${}^{\circ }$C results in crystallization of CoFe with \textit{bcc} structure along (110) orientation. As-deposited films are non-metallic in nature with the coercivity (H${}_c$) of 5Oe while the films annealed at 400${}^{\circ }$C are metallic with a H${}_c$ of 135Oe.

16 pages, 6 figures

References in corpus (1)

• Effect of high annealing temperature on giant tunnel magnetoresistance ratio of CoFeB/MgO/CoFeB magnetic tunnel junctions

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