Structure, magnetic and electrical transport properties of cosputtered Fe0.5Ge0.5 nanocomposite films

Fe0.5Ge0.5 nanocomposite films with different film thicknesses were fabricated using cosputtering. The films are composed of Ge, Fe and Fe3Ge2, and are ferromagnetic at room temperature. The saturation magnetization and magnetic interaction including dipolar interaction and exchange coupling increase with the increasing film thickness. The electrical conductance mechanism turns from metallic to semiconducting and the saturation Hall resistivity ρxys increases with the decreasing film thickness. At 28 nm, ρxys is ∼137 μΩ cm at 2 K, about 150 times larger than that of pure Fe film (0.9 μΩ cm) and four orders larger than that of bulk Fe. The ρxy–H curves of all the films show the same linearity character in low-field range even though the temperature-independent slope is different at different film thicknesses. At high temperatures, the skew scattering mechanism is dominant. At low temperatures, side-jump effect should be dominant at large resistivity ρxx regime for the thin films, and the skew scattering is dominant at small ρxx regime for the thick films.