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International audience; In this work, the effect of the loading path on the multicracking of Nickel thin films on Kapton® substrate was studied thanks to an experimental set-up combining controlled biaxial deformation, x-ray diffraction and digital image correlation. Samples were biaxially stretched up to 10% strain following either a single equibiaxial path or a complex one consisting of loading successively along each of the axes of the cruciform specimen. While the first path leads to a mud-crack pattern (random), the second leads to a roman-bricks one (square). Moreover, the in situ x-ray diffraction experiments show that the stress field developed in the thin film during the multicracking is clearly dependent on the loading path. By combining the study of stresses and x-ray diffraction peaks linewidth, we evidenced mechanical domains related to initiation of cracks and their multiplication for each loading path. Moreover, stress evolution in the thin film during mud-crack pattern formation is significantly smoother than in the case of roman-bricks one as represented in the plane stress space.

Replacing materials based on rare-earth elements in current permanent magnets is a real scientific, economic and environmental challenge. Ferromagnetic 3d transition metals seem an apt direction to go in this field, due to their high residual magnetization and thermal stability. In order to improve their coercive behavior, nanostructured magnets based on the assembly of high-aspect-ratio nanoparticles ( i.e. cobalt based nanorods and nanowires) have recently been proposed. In these, the nanoparticle morphology itself drives the magnetization reversal mechanism. This purely geometrical effect seems to obscure the effects of structural defects, although it is clear that high magnetocrystalline energy is required to maintain a stable orientation of the magnetic moment inside the nanoparticles. We present here an experimental study whose aim is to distinguish the role of the stacking faults from the effects of shape and morphology on the magnetization reversal mechanism in cobalt-based nanowires. Coercive field results have been obtained on Co 80 Ni 20 nanowires synthesized by a polyol process. Through accurate control of shape and morphology, it was possible to discard the effects of shape and thus to highlight the influence of crystal defects on the magnetism of Co 80 Ni 20 nanowires. A micromagnetic study, consistent with the experimental analyses, is also presented. The results discussed in this work clearly show that even if the morphological characteristics are conducive to a high coercive field, the presence of numerous stacking faults has the opposite effect and leads to materials with a significantly lower coercive field than expected, which is not suitable for permanent magnet applications.

25 nm to 50 nm Co2FeAl (CFA) thick wire arrays with varying widths and spacing have been patterned from continuous CFA films deposited on MgO(001) using e-beam lithography and Ar ion milling. Magneto-optical Kerr effect, transverse bias initial inverse susceptibility and torque measurements reveal that the in-plane magnetic anisotropy of the wires is dominantly monitored by a uniaxial term, in contrast with the continuous films where it is governed by the superposition of a fourfold term and of a smaller uniaxial term. The microstrip ferromagnetic resonance spectra performed using a magnetic field H, applied in the plane of the studied sample along various directions, or perpendicularly to this plane, gave us access to various quantized modes originating from the patterning. In addition, Brillouin light scattering also exhibits quantized modes. A large part of the experimental observations can be quantitatively interpreted as resulting from the demagnetizing terms induced by the geometrical patterning. However, the presented model, simply built on the effect of the demagnetizing field, is not able to give account of all the quantized modes present in the resonance spectra. When H is parallel to the wires, a more complete description is used: it considers the wave-vector quantization induced by the patterning. For the magnetic modes concerned by both approaches, the correspondence between the 2 models is easily established. When H is not parallel to the wires quantitative descriptions of the behavior of the field dependence of the observed modes still can often be performed. Finally, in all the studied patterned samples, the uniform magnetic mode, termed “film mode”, relative to the parent continuous film is observed by ferromagnetic resonance: such a behavior, which has been reported previously, remains to be completely interpreted.

The mechanical properties of CoCrCuFeNi thin films deposited by magnetron sputtering on Kapton substrates are studied in this paper. Measurements by confocal microscopy during tensile tests allow the analysis of multi-cracking and subsequent buckling of these thin films. Different multi-cracking models (Beuth, Xia & Hutchinson, Franck) allow to analyze the fragmentation experiments and to determine the fracture toughness. It increases with the film thickness and thus does not seem to be an intrinsic property of the material, but linked to the nanocrystalline nature of the films. Finally, the adhesion between CoCrCuFeNi thin films and Kapton is found to be comparable to that of other metal/polymer systems.

We study the influence of applied in-plane elastic strains on the static magnetic configuration of a 530 nm magnetostrictive FeCuNbSiB ( Finemet ® ) thin film. The in-plane strains are induced via the application of a voltage to a piezoelectric actuator on which the film/substrate system was glued. A quantitative characterization of the voltage dependence of the induced-strain at the surface of the film was performed using a digital image correlation technique. Magnetic Force Microscopy (MFM) images at remanence (H=0 Oe and U=0 V) clearly reveal the presence of weak stripe domains. The effect of the voltage-induced strain shows the existence of a voltage threshold value for the strike configuration break. For a maximum strain of e XX ~ 0.5 × 10 − 3 we succeed in destabilizing the stripes configuration helping the setting up of a complete homogeneous magnetic pattern.

We present in this paper the structural and magnetic properties of high aspect ratio Co nanoparticles (~10) at high temperatures (up to 623 K) using in situ X ray diffraction (XRD) and SQUID characterizations. We show that the anisotropic shapes, the structural and texture properties are preserved up to 500 K. The coercivity can be modelled by u0Hc=2(Kmc+Kshape)/Ms with Kmc the magnetocrystalline anisotropy constant, Kshape the shape anisotropy constant and Ms the saturation magnetization. Hc decreases linearly when the temperature is increased due to the loss of the Co magnetocrystalline anisotropy contribution. At 500K, 50% of the room temperature coercivity is preserved corresponding to the shape anisotropy contribution only. We show that the coercivity drop is reversible in the range 300 - 500 K in good agreement with the absence of particle alteration. Above 525 K, the magnetic properties are irreversibly altered either by sintering or by oxidation., 8 pages, 7 figures, submitted to Journal of Solid State Chemistry

Co2MnGe films of 30 and 50 nm in thickness were grown by RF-sputtering. Their magnetic anisotropies, dynamic properties and the different excited spin wave modes have been studied using conventional ferromagnetic resonance (FMR) and Microstrip line FMR (MS-FMR). From the in-plane and the out-of-plane resonance field values, the effective magnetization (4πMeff) and the g-factor are deduced. These values are then used to fit the in-plane angular-dependence of the uniform precession mode and the field-dependence of the resonance frequency of the uniform mode and the first perpendicular standing spin wave to determine the in-plane uniaxial, the four-fold anisotropy fields, the exchange stiffness constant and the magnetization at saturation. The samples exhibit a clear predominant four-fold magnetic anisotropy besides a smaller uniaxial anisotropy. This uniaxial anisotropy is most probably induced by the growth conditions.