Pulsed laser deposition of amorphous soft magnetic thin films for sensor applications

Amorphous magnetic thin films and multilayers form a huge area both of basic research and technological interest, but they show a strong dependence of fundamental magnetic characteristics on preparation conditions. Pulsed laser deposition (PLD), also called laser ablation, is a recently developed method, relatively inexpensive, easy to operate and fast. It can be proposed for magnetoelastic and magnetoimpedance media preparation. We describe laser ablated thin films preparation of magnetically soft amorphous materials of commercial METGLASS2605® composition. Glass substrates of different roughness were used. Some samples were deposited onto a Cu buffer layer, and in situ heat treatments at the temperatures of 500–700 K were also performed. It has been demonstrated the possibility to obtain relatively soft magnetic films of this composition (with coercivity between 500 and 6000 A m−1) by laser ablation.