Ferromagnetic resonance study of polycrystalline cobalt ultrathin films

We present room-temperature ferromagnetic resonance (FMR) studies of polycrystalline parallel to Pt/10 nm Cu/t Co/10 nm Cu/Pt parallel to films as a function of Co layer thickness (1 <= t <= 10 nm) grown by evaporation and magnetron sputtering. FMR was studied with a high-frequency broadband coplanar waveguide (up to 25 GHz) using a flip-chip method. The resonance field and the linewidth were measured as functions of the ferromagnetic layer thickness. The evaporated films exhibit a lower magnetization density (M-s=1131 emu/cm(3)) compared to the sputtered films (M-s=1333 emu/cm(3)), with practically equal perpendicular surface anisotropy (K-s similar or equal to-0.5 erg/cm(2)). For both series of films, a strong increase of the linewidth was observed for Co layer thickness below 3 nm. For films with a ferromagnetic layer thinner than 4 nm, the damping of the sputtered films is larger than that of the evaporated films. The dependence of the linewidth can be understood in terms of the spin-pumping effect, from which the interface spin-mixing conductance is deduced. (C) 2006 American Institute of Physics.