Effect of grain misorientation on the stripe domains in evaporated cobalt films

X-ray diffraction and magnetic force microscopy techniques were used to investigate the structural and the static magnetic properties of vapor-deposited cobalt films with various thicknesses t ranging from 50 to 195 nm. Texture measurements revealed that as the thickness increases, the films become predominantly c-axis oriented. Magnetic stripe domains structure was only observed for the thicker films, with t=195, 173 and 125 nm, while such a magnetic configuration was expected for all the samples based on the theoretical studies. Since the layers present increasing c-axis misorientation when the thickness decreases, we assume that this effect can prevent the stripe domains formation. This behavior is qualitatively explained by a simple model which describes the stripe domains structure taking into account the role of a small misorientation of the anisotropy axis. Copyright EDP Sciences/Società Italiana di Fisica/Springer-Verlag 2005