Preparation of sputtered Fe3O4 thin film

Fe3O4, as a half-metallic ferrimagnetic material, is believed to be one of the most promising materials in spin transport for spintronics. However, fabricating stoichiometric Fe3O4 film is still challenging because the oxidation is hard to control for various preparing methods. In this paper, series of Fe3O4 thin films on Si (100) substrates are grown by sputtering from a Fe3O4 target without oxygen atmosphere at different growth temperature and then extra heat treatment in high vacuum. By combining X-ray diffractometer (XRD), Raman spectrum, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and X-ray magnetic circular dichroism, VSM analysis, we see that the structure and magnetic moment of Fe3O4 film are not only related with growth temperature during sputtering, but also refer to the temperature of post-heat treatments. When the growth temperature is lower than 300 °C, the film does not show any XRD diffraction peaks. When the growth temperature increases from 300 to 500 °C, the film shows the (111) texture of Fe3O4 film clearly. However, the other XRD diffraction peaks are observed after post-heat treatment. The saturation magnetization increases with growth temperature and the largest saturation magnetization is 473 emu/cm3 for growth temperature of 450 °C and extra heat treatment, which is close to bulk Fe3O4. Our results suggest that a selectable method can be used to fabricate high magnetic moment of Fe3O4 thin film.