Magnetic properties of multilayered GdDyFeCo thin films

The variation in the magnetic properties of compositionally modulated GdDyFeCo films prepared by two-source magnetron sputtering as a function of the compositional period was investigated. The compositional period was varied by altering the substrate rotation rate; the minimum period was 1.5 Å. Variation of the compositional period caused great changes in the magnetic and magnetooptical properties, while films with a compositional period of 3 Å showed the optimum recording characteristics. Increasing the compositional period caused magnetization of the FeCo layers to increase, and the perpendicular magnetic anisotropy to decrease. The degradation in recording characteristics at 1.5 Å can be mainly attributed to the increasing demagnetization of the field between T_comp and T_c brought about by a change in the temperature dependence of saturation magnetization