Study of high coercive force films made by vacuum deposition of cobalt onto chromium

A new method to make high coercive force films, by successive evaporations of chromium and cobalt, was demonstrated in 1966 at the 'Laboratoire d'Electronique et de Technologie de l'Informatique'. This work first contains a description of the magnetic properties of these films according to the conditions of preparation. These properties, which are isotropic in the plane of the film, are then related to the crystallographic structure of chromium and cobalt, in particular through electron microscopy. It is concluded that the coercive force is essentially due to the high magneto-crystalline anisotropy of cobalt in its hexagonal phase and depends, altogether with the shape of the hysteresis loop, on the magnetostatic coupling between the grains, which varies according to their dimensions. The chromium underlayer, if its surface is free enough of oxygen contamination, induces the growth of the hexagonal phase and influences the grain size of cobalt by a sort of epitaxy. At last, the behaviour of the Co/Cr films as a magnetic recording material is briefly examined and discussed. (author)