Effects of annealing temperature and time on microstructure and magnetic properties of Pr-Co thin films

A series of Pr-Co thin films were deposited on the Si (100) substrates with Cr underlayer by magnetron sputtering. The effects of both the post-annealing temperature and the annealing time on the microstructure and magnetic properties for the Pr-Co films were studied systematically. The as-deposited Pr-Co thin films are mostly amorphous and tend to crystallize after annealing at temperatures above 600 °C. When the annealing time is increased, the films show a complicated structure with various phases co-existing. Accordingly, the as-deposited film and low temperature annealed films are soft magnets and films annealed at temperatures beyond 600 °C tend to be hard magnets. When the annealing time is increased from 5 min to 2 h, the films transfer from hard magnets to soft again. The sample annealed at 600 °C for 10 min shows the largest coercivity of 0.59 T.