Peak Identification of Conventional X-ray Diffraction Patterns for MBE FePt Thin Films on MgO Single-crystal Substrates

Conventional x-ray diffraction patterns were recorded and used for peak identification and phase determination of MBE multilayer Pt/FePt/Pt thin films on MgO single-crystal substrates. Results showed that both the FePt and the Pt layers were either epitaxially grown or strongly textured with the (110) planes parallel to the surfaces of the MgO (110) substrates. The FePt layer was ordered to the Ll, (AuCu I) phase. An extra strong peak at 30 ” was identified to be the W2 peak of CuKa for the MgO (220) reflection. The h/2 peak was greatly reduced using a scintillation counter with a narrow PHA window. To eliminate the?J2 peak completely, a Xe proportional counter with a high energy resolution of 28 % was used. Intermetallic alloy thin films of FePt have recently been found to show promising characteristics for high density recording application. ’ Magnetic and magneto-optical properties of the films were found to correlate with film structure. 2,3,4 The ordered FePt phase with its c-axis in plane showed large magnetic anisotropy. The higher the order, the larger the anisotropy. In our laboratory, we used X-ray diffraction techniques to determine the structure of FePt films. Crystalline phases presented in the films was first identified using the conventional Copyright (C) JCPDS-International Centre for Diffraction Data 1999 47 symmetric Bragg diffraction technique. In-plane crystalline structure of the films was determined using grazing-incidence diffraction technique, while thin-film structure perpendicular to the film surface was obtained using symmetric Bragg diffraction technique. In this paper, we report the results of peak/phase identification of FePt films deposited on MgO single-crystal substrates. Results on analyzing epitaxial structure of the films using grazing-incidence technique is reported in a separated paper at this Denver X-ray Conference.