Relationship between microstructural and magnetic properties of PrCo-based films prepared by the vacuum evaporation method

Highlights: • Structural and magnetic properties. • PrCo-based films. • The vacuum evaporation method. • Correlation between nanostructure and extrinsic magnetic properties. In this work, Ce₂Ni₇ type structural PrCo-based films were deposited on Si(1 0 0) substrate by ultra-high (UHV) vacuum evaporation process. The structural and magnetic properties of these films have been performed using X-ray diffraction (XRD), atomic force microscopy (AFM), vibrating sample magnetometer (VSM) and magnetic force microscopy (MFM) techniques. Two effects on structural and magnetic properties of PrCo films have been investigated: the effect of the annealing temperature (T_a) and the effect of the variation of the magnetic X-layer thickness. The as deposited PrCo films have a magnetic coercivity (H_c) of about 40–100 Oe. But after annealing at 600 °C, H_c has increased hight about 9.5 kOe for PrCo(X = 20 nm) and 10.2 kOe for PrCo(X = 50 nm) were observed. The magnetic properties were affected by the thickness due to the morphology, also the relationship between the intergrain exchange coupling (IEC), the size and quantity of the PrCo grains. The hight extrinsic properties of H_c = 10.2 kOe, maximum energy product ${\left(\text{BH}\right)}_{\max }$ of 5.12 MGOe and remanence ratio ${\text{M}}_r/{\text{M}}_s$ = 0.53 are reported for the PrCo(X = 50 nm) films. These properties are highly desirable for extremely high-density magnetic recording media applications.