Effect of grain size on the soft magnetic properties of FeCoV∕CoNbZr multilayers

Experimental characterization of macroscopic effective anisotropy field and coercive field for nanocrystalline (FeCoV∕CoNbZr)16 multilayers was carried out with transverse susceptibility. The multilayer structure consisting of a FeCoV ferromagnetic nanogranular layer covered with a CoNbZr amorphous layer was prepared by rf sputtering. All multilayers had the same thickness of CoNbZr (3 nm) with FeCoV layer thickness varying between 6 and 30 nm. The properties of the optimized multilayer structured films are related to an appropriate grain size of FeCoV where the CoNbZr layer acts as a very effective grain refiner and reduces the average grain size. The experimental values of the coercive force and the macroscopic uniaxial anisotropy were related to the grain size. The values were analyzed according to a two dimensional random anisotropy model which takes into account the uniaxial anisotropy.