Development of a cosputter-evaporation chamber for Fe–Ga films.

A new deposition technique involving the dc magnetron sputtering of Fe simultaneously with Ga evaporation has been developed to fabricate thin Fe_(1-x)Ga_x (0<x<0.4) films. Simultaneous sputtering and evaporation has been developed as an alternative to the sputtering of alloy targets, where the need for compositional variation can be hard to address. The new technique allows the freedom of composition that cosputtering would offer, but mitigates the issue of being unable to sputter Ga. The need for the preparation of alloy targets is also avoided. To control the concentration of the Ga in the films, the evaporation rate, the dc magnetron power, and the chamber pressure were varied. The films fabricated were studied to determine their magnetic and microstructural properties. The Fe–Ga films fabricated had magnetostriction constants which had increased by a factor of 5 compared to the same thickness of Fe film. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]