Combining large magnetostriction and large magnetostrictive susceptibility in TbFeCo/YxFe1-x exchange-spring-type multilayers

摘要

An approach to obtain both large magnetostriction and large magnetostrictive susceptibility is developed. It is applied to sputtered {Tb(Fe0.55Co0.45)(1.5)/(YxFe1-x)} (x=0, 0.1 and 0.2) multilayers. In the as-deposited samples, the TbFeCo layers are in the amorphous state, but the microstructure of the YxFe1-x layers is not the same: A crystalline state is observed in pure Fe layers (x=0), whereas body-centered-cubic-Fe nanocrystals coexist within an YFe amorphous matrix in Y0.1Fe0.9 layers. A parallel magnetostrictive susceptibility chi(lambdaparallel to) as large as 29.4x10(-2) T-1, which is almost half of that (79.6x10(-2) T-1) of the Metglas 2605SC was obtained for x=0.1. This is attributed to the exchange coupling between sandwiched TbFeCo layers and nanostructured YFe layers. (C) 2004 American Institute of Physics.