Title
Thermal annealing effects on the structural, magnetic and hyperfine properties of the Fe/SnO <inf>2</inf> /Fe thin film deposited by RF sputtering method
Date Issued
01 April 2019
Access level
metadata only access
Resource Type
journal article
Author(s)
Universidad de Brasília
Universidad de Brasília
Universidad de Brasília
Publisher(s)
Elsevier Ltd
Abstract
In the present work, the effect of the post-deposition annealing process in an air atmosphere on the structural and magnetic properties of the ternary Fe/SnO 2 /Fe thin film, deposited by the sputtering technique was reported. X-ray diffraction (XRD) pattern confirms the formation of alpha-iron, magnetite and tin dioxide phases in the as-deposited film. Meanwhile, after the thermal annealing, the formation of hematite and tin dioxide phases was determined. Magnetization (M) measurements reveal some features after the annealing: i) a reduction of the coercive field (H C ), which has been assigned to the presence of hematite, and ii) the transformation of alpha-iron/magnetite phases into the hematite phase in accordance with results obtained from XRD data analysis. Those results were also confirmed by room temperature Conversion electron Mössbauer spectroscopy (CEMS) measurements carried out using a 57 Co(Rh) source. Furthermore, the doublets of the CEMS spectrum of the as-deposited film (21%) has been assigned to the signal of Fe 3+ and Fe 2.5+ (mixture of Fe 3+ and Fe 2+ ) ions, which diffuse into the SnO 2 matrix. The spectral area of those doublets is clearly reduced to 3% after the thermal annealing. It suggests the migration of the Fe ions from the non-magnetic phase to the magnetic phase. On the other hand, CEMS spectrum of the as-deposited film carried out with using a 119 m Sn source is well modeled with a doublet and a sextet. The doublet was assigned to Sn 4+ ions of the SnO 2 phase; meanwhile, the sextet was assigned to Sn 4+ ions located at interstitial and/or substitutional sites of the alpha-iron/magnetite phases. Those tin ions sense the supertransferred hyperfine field from Fe neighbor. After the thermal annealing, the CEMS spectrum was well modeled with only a doublet related to SnO 2 phase, suggesting that the tin ions have been out diffused from the magnetic phase (alpha-iron and magnetite) and incorporate into the no magnetic o-SnO 2 .
Start page
182
End page
187
Volume
93
Language
English
OCDE Knowledge area
Recubrimiento, Películas
Subjects
Scopus EID
2-s2.0-85059637016
Source
Materials Science in Semiconductor Processing
ISSN of the container
13698001
Sponsor(s)
The authors thank the Brazilian agencies CAPES , FAPEMIG , CNPq and FAPDF for financial support. The authors thank Dr. L.N. Coelho by the AFM measurements and the insightful comments of the manuscript.
Sources of information:
Directorio de Producción Científica
Scopus