Polarized neutron reflectometry has been used to study interface magnetism and magneticdead layers in model amorphous CoFeB:Ta alloy thin-film multilayers with Curietemperatures tuned to be below room-temperature. This allows temperature dependentvariations in the effective magnetic thickness of the film to be determined attemperatures that are a significant fraction of the Curie temperature, which cannotbe achieved in the material systems used for spintronic devices. In addition to variationin the effective magnetic thickness due to compositional grading at the interfacewith the tantalum capping layer, the key finding is that at the interface between ferromagneticfilm and GaAs(001) substrate local interfacial alloying creates an additionalmagnetic dead-layer. The thickness of this magnetic dead-layer is temperature dependent,which may have significant implications for elevated-temperature operation ofhybrid ferromagnetic metal-semiconductor spintronic devices. ? 2017 Author(s).All article content, except where otherwise noted, is licensed under a CreativeCommons Attribution (CC BY) license.
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