Thickness effect on magnetic properties in nanocrystalline Fe–Hf–N thin films

Abstract The magnetic properties of the films depend on the film thickness. To investigate the thickness effect, the films are prepared by a reactive rf magnetron sputtering method with different thicknesses (0.05–4.5 μm). The angular dependency of resonance magnetic field and linewidth is observed by FMR technique at 9.84 GHz. As a result, there exist two different resonance modes in films below 1 μm thickness. On the basis of the FMR, XRD and TEM, an amorphous phase forms during initial growth stage and it gradually changes to crystalline structure as the film thickness increases.