High coercivity, epitaxial Sm-Co films with uniaxial in-plane anisotropy

Epitaxial Sm-Co(1100) and (1120) films have been grown by magnetron sputtering onto Cr(211) and (100) buffer layers, respectively. The Sm-Co(1100) films exhibit uniaxial in-plane anisotropies of «20-25 T and room-temperature coercive fields that increase to 4.1 T as the film thickness decreases to 75 Å. The 3 T coercivities of the (1120) films are independent of thickness. © 1997 American Institute of Physics.