Design and application of gradient annealing devices for the parallel thermal processing of Fe/Pt multilayers
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Design and application of gradient annealing devices for the parallel thermal processing of Fe/Pt multilayers Sigurd Thienhaus1, 2, Robert Hiergeist1, Alan Savan1, and Alfred Ludwig1,2 1 Combinatorial Material Science group, caesar, 53175 Bonn, Germany 2 Institute of Materials, Ruhr-University Bochum, 44780 Bochum, Germany ABSTRACT This paper discusses the design and use of gradient annealing devices. Generally, it is intended to use such devices for the rapid optimization of thin film materials by simultaneous thermal processing at different temperatures. Furthermore, these devices are efficient for shorttime annealing experiments. They are used in order to quickly vary the annealing parameters (temperature, time) from sample to sample. Here, nanoscale Fe/Pt multilayer precursor thin films for the fabrication of hard magnetic Fe-Pt thin films are investigated as a test system. First results prove the usefulness of the gradient annealing devices for high-throughput experiments. INTRODUCTION The combinatorial materials science approach relies on fabrication and processing methods for materials libraries as well as corresponding high-throughput characterization technologies. Along with the parameters of materials synthesis, annealing is one of the most important processing steps, as it allows the control of the material’s microstructure and thus its properties. Examples are the fabrication of nanocrystalline alloys from amorphous precursors [1], and the control of grain size. The control of temperature and time, i.e. the energy introduced to the system by annealing, are of highest importance for successful materials optimization and must be optimized for each system under investigation. The fabrication of materials libraries yields a large number of samples from one deposition experiment. If the library is designed in a way that all samples on it are different, it is suitable to anneal the complete materials library at one homogenous temperature. However this means that the identification of optimized annealing conditions requires the fabrication of multiple materials libraries. The use of a gradient annealing device for the parallel thermal processing of thin films would be advantageous in comparison to this approach and to one-byone annealing experiments. Here, we propose the use of a special design for a materials library (Figure 1) which is suitable for the use in a gradient annealing device. This design implies only one gradient direction (e.g. a compositional variation along the rows parallel to the wafer flat) which can be realized by the deposition of opposing thin film wedges. The samples along the columns in the direction perpendicular to the flat should have identical compositions. The samples from such columns can be used for the gradient annealing experiment in order to identify optimized annealing conditions for a constant composition. Then the next columns can be processed in the gradient annealing device. Finally, the compositional and annealing influences on the materials can be rapidl
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