Specular and off‐specular x‐ray reflectivity study of ion irradiated Co/Pt multilayers

Abstract Co/Pt thin film superlattices with strong perpendicular anisotropy and out‐of‐plane coercivities of 5–11 kOe were irradiated with Xe + ions to tailor their magnetic properties. Specular and off‐specular x‐ray reflectivity (XRR) studies were performed to correlate the irradiation‐induced coercivity reduction with changes of the interfacial properties. Off‐specular XRR turned out to be particularly sensitive to the Co/Pt superlattice period. By applying the distorted wave Born approximation to simulate the diffusely scattered intensity, we were able to quantify the vertical roughness correlation throughout the superlattice stack. Study of a Co/Pt multilayer exposed to different Xe + ion doses suggests that progressive ion bombardment causes a gradual loss of conformality between the different interfaces and a change of the interface morphology, whereas initial vertical RMS roughness values are not affected. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.