Growth behavior and intrinsic properties of vapor-deposited iron palladium thin films

Iron palladium based alloys are promising candidates to realize miniaturized magnetic shape memory devices on a thin film basis and also bear interesting magnetic properties, particularly for the area of magnetic recording. To address the impact of growth conditions on physical properties, thin vapor-deposited Fe(70)Pd(30) films are analyzed with respect to structure, texture, and stress as a function of processing parameters. We find that deposition at room temperature leads to a bct structure, while deposition at elevated temperature as well as annealing results in austenitic films in the fcc phase, which is desirable for magnetic shape memory applications. (c) 2008 American Institute of Physics.