Investigation of thick cobalt films electrodeposited on gold substrates

We have investigated the morphological and magnetic structures of thick cobalt films obtained by electrodeposition on polycrystalline gold substrates. The deposits became more and more inhomogeneous with increasing deposit thickness. The morphological structure of the films consisted of nanocrystalline grains roundish in shape and having sizes of the order of 100 nm. The magnetic domains were of the order of 500 nm in size and exhibited sufficiently high perpendicular anisotropy. The deposits were found to possess mainly the hexagonal close-packed crystalline structure with sufficiently strong [0 0 0 1] preferred orientation. The average domain size slightly increased with decreasing average grain size.