Magnetic properties of amorphous alloy films of Fe with Gd, Tb, Dy, Ho, or Er

Amorphous rare-earth RE(Gd, Tb, Dy, Ho, Er) -Fe films prepared by cosputtering were studied. The compositional analysis was obtained from known deposition profiles, x-ray microanalysis, and the stripe-width measurements. The structural variation with composition change was investigated by electron diffraction and dark-field microscopy. The Curie temperature T/sub c/, the compensation temperature T/sub comp/, the coercive force H/sub c/, the uniaxial anisotropy energy K/sub u/ and the static domain properties such as the stripe width W/sub s/, the wall energy sigma/sub w/, and the exchange stiffness constant A were investigated. The systematic variation of T/sub c/ and T/sub comp/ associated with a variation of composition and RE species could be described by the Heiman et al. model. The static domain properties could be interpreted in terms of the wall energy model and the mean field approximation of the exchange stiffness constant A