Epitaxial growth and magnetic properties of Ni/sub 80/Fe/sub 20//Fe/sub 60/Mn/sub 40/ bilayers on H-Si[110] using a Cu buffer layer

A very thin Cu (/spl sim/1 nm) buffer layer on Si[110] is enough to induce Ni/sub 80/Fe/sub 20//Fe/sub 60/Mn/sub 40/ [111] epitaxial growth. The film surface roughness increases with increasing Cu thickness. The crystallinity improves as the Cu buffer thickness increases. The uniaxial anisotropy of the pinned Ni/sub 80/Fe/sub 20/ was greatly enhanced in the samples with thick Cu (>10 nm). This reflects the great effect of film crystallinity on exchange anisotropy.