Epitaxial SmCo5 thin films with perpendicular anisotropy

Epitaxial SmCo5 thin films with strong perpendicular magnetic anisotropy have been developed by pulsed laser deposition on heated Ru buffered Al2O3(0001) substrates. Pole figure measurements on thicker films reveal the existence of two epitaxial variants, 30 degrees in-plane rotated to each other, which reduces to a single epitaxial relation for smaller film thickness. The presence of a single SmCo5 phase with perpendicular direction of the c-axis is established by multiple peak analysis of x-ray data in pole figure geometry and is confirmed by a numerical fit of hysteresis measurements, which results in an anisotropy constant of K-u=7.6 MJ/m(3).