Control of magnetic damping by means of Ni implantation in thin Ni81Fe19 layers

The static and dynamic magnetic properties of 20 nm thick Ni81Fe19 films have been investigated as a function of Ni ion fluence up to 1x10^16 Ni/cm^2 (5 atom-%). The implantation has been performed at 30 keV in order to implant the Ni ions in the center of the ferromagnetic layer and to achieve a rather homogeneous energy distribution throughout the film. With increasing ion fluence the saturation magnetization and the effective magnetic anisotropies (static and dynamic) are reduced by about 80%. However, the effective magnetic damping is drastically enhanced for higher ion fluences. Starting at a pure permalloy value of alpha= 0.008 a 7-fold increase to alpha= 0.058 is found for a fluence of 0.8x10^16 Ni/cm^2. This increase can be explained mainly by the drop in saturation magnetization in connection with structural changes. In addition ion implantation in an applied magnetic field allows the setting of the uniaxial anisotropy direction irrespective of the initial orientation for fluences as low as 5x10^13 Ni/cm^2.