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Annealing epitaxial multilayers of Pt and Co cause the formation of ordered PtCo tetragonal intermetallic compound with perpendicular magnetic anisotropy and a preferred c-axis orientation perpendicular to the film plane. Large magnetic anisotropy, magneto-optic Kerr rotations and magnetization are exhibited by these films, indicating that they can be used for magneto-optic and perpendicular recordings.

Asymmetric Bragg diffraction is used in the study of compositional modulation in Co/Pt multilayer films to enable the investigation of different components of the in-plane strain, for which the angle between the scattering vector and the surface normal is varied. The measurements yielded the in-plane strain values and unstrained lattice parameters, indicating the mixture of two metals. Substantial intermixing was observed at the smaller bilayer periods, and the bilayer period varied for films displaying different strains. Measurements by Kerr rotation show that perpendicular anisotropy is exhibited by these small bilayer period films.