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Fabrication of β Mn type CoZnMn(001) film on MgO single crystal substrate
β-Mn type CoZnMn is one of chiral magnets and is reported to host Bloch skyrmions above room temperature 1. CoZnMn epitaxial thin films are attractive for the device application, however, there is no report on the fabrication of the epitaxial film, although polycrystalline CoZnMn films were reported in the previous study 2. Here, we report CoZnMn epitaxial films grown on MgO(001) single crystal substrates. Co-Zn(10 – t nm)/Mn(t nm)15 multilayers were prepared by rf magnetron sputtering of Co-Zn composite target and Mn target. The multilayers were grown on 10 nm-thick W buffer layer. The total thickness of the multilayers was kept constant at 150 nm, and the Mn composition was controlled by varying the Mn layer thickness t. The composition of Co-Zn layer was estimated to be Co/Zn = 0.8 by energy dispersive x-ray spectroscopy. 10 nm-thick W capping layer was deposited on the multilayers. After the deposition, the multilayers were annealed at 300 °C in vacuum to obtain the CoZnMn alloy. Crystal structure was characterized by x-ray diffraction. Figure 1(a) shows a reciprocal space mapping of the sample for t = 2 nm in the plane parallel to MgO(130), where Qy and Qz are parallel to MgO310 and MgO001, respectively. In the figure, β-Mn type CoZnMn 103, 104 and 204 diffraction spots were observed, indicating the epitaxial growth of β-Mn type CoZnMn film with (001) orientation. Figure 1(b) shows φ scan profile for β-Mn type CoZnMn 103 diffractions. 8 peaks were observed in the in-plane scanning even though β-Mn type CoZnMn has 4-fold symmetry, which means the existence of twinned crystal grains with CoZnMn100//MgO310 and CoZnMn100//MgO3 -1 0 in the film. Although there exists twin crystals in the film, β-Mn CoZnMn (001) film was successfully fabricated on a MgO single crystal substrate.
References:
1 Y. Tokunaga et.al., Nat. Comm. 6, 7638 (2015).
2 Ishikawa et.al., The 66th JSAP Spring Meeting, 9p-PB1-15 (2019).
Fig. 1 (a) Reciprocal space mapping of the CoZnMn film in the plane parallel to MgO(130). (b) φ scan for β-Mn type CoZnMn 103 diffractions.