Influence of Hydrogen on Magnetic and Defect Properties of Fe60Al40 thin films

The effect of hydrogen treatment on the magnetic properties and the defect concentration of Fe60Al40 films, possessing A2 and B2 structure respectively, have been investigated. The H treatment was realized by proton irradiation as well as by reactor loading. Ferromagnetic A2-Fe60Al40 films of 250 nm thickness were irradiated with protons at an energy of 17 keV and fluences of up to 1.46 E18 ions cm-2. Magneto-optical Kerr effect showed a variation of coercivity and an increase of saturation magnetization (MS) as a function of ion fluence. Positron annihilation spectroscopy (PAS) indicates an increase of the open volume defect concentration.
Superparamagnetic B2-Fe60Al40 films were capped with 10 nm Pd and annealed at 423 K in 30 bar H atmosphere. PAS shows that the H-annealing process led to a decrease in the open volume defect concentration. H-treatment caused a small increase in MS from 0.013 to 0.017 µb/Fe atom, as well as a shift in the superparamagnetic blocking temperature from 85 to 115 K respectively. While H treatment significantly modifies the magnetic properties of Fe60Al40, elastic recoil detection suggests that the hydrogen is not retained in the vacancies present in the film, suggesting that the variations in magnetic properties may be mostly due to structural changes.