Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 February 2011
The microstructural characteristics of sputtered Co-Cr films, such as grain size observed by SEM and the crystallite size estimated by x-ray diffractometry, vary throughout the thickness of the film. The grain and crystallites size become larger, as the film grows. In this study, multilayered Co-Cr thin films with intermediate layers of amorphous carbon have been prepared by Facing Targets Sputtering (FTS) in order to produce films with uniform structure throughout the entire thickness of the film. Amorphous carbon sputtered films have been used as intermediate layers since they are fully continuous, even though they are very thin so that they may not affect the crystallographic structure of Co-Cr thin film successively deposited. The carbon thin layer deposited at Ar gas pressure lower than 2 mTorr did not cause the degradation in c-axis orientation of the Co-Cr crystallites in the Co-Cr thin films. Then, the films composed of ten Co-Cr layers with thickness of 200Å were deposited, varying the thickness of carbon intermediate layers δup to 200 X. The grain size in these multilayered film show same vaiue as that of 200 Å-thick single layer film without intermediate carbon layers. These results indicate that the multilayered films prepared by this technique are composed of fine grains of comparable size.