Influence of Pt doping on magnetic and electronic properties in NiFe thin films

Abstract Several applications in nowadays spintronics require new materials with a lower coercive field, higher spin damping parameter, and lower Curie temperature to manipulate its magnetization via injected spin currents (spin-transfer torque or spin–orbit torque) with a faster magnetization switching. Besides, for the anisotropic magnetoresistance (AMR)-based magnetic field sensors, the materials that have softer magnetic properties and higher AMR differences ( <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" overflow="scroll"> <mml:mrow> <mml:mi mathvariant="normal">Δ</mml:mi> <mml:mi>R</mml:mi> <mml:mo>=</mml:mo> <mml:mrow> <mml:msub> <mml:mi>R</mml:mi> <mml:mo>∥</mml:mo> </mml:msub> </mml:mrow> <mml:mo>−</mml:mo> <mml:mi>R</mml:mi> <mml:mi mathvariant="normal">⊥</mml:mi> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> ) are valuable to enhance the sensor’s magnetic field sensitivity and signal’s readability. In this regard, the tunability of magneto-static, magneto-dynamic, and electronic properties of Ni 80 Fe 20 alloy diluted with Pt have been systematically investigated in the present work. For the (Ni 80 Fe 20 ) (1− x ) Pt ( x ) ternary alloys, x were varied between 0 and 0.6. The experimental results show that the use of ∼15% Pt is beneficial to enhance the AMR difference with a lower coercive field. Furthermore, since the addition of Pt into Ni 80 Fe 20 enhances the Gilbert damping while lowering both the Curie temperature and saturation magnetization, the magnetic moments become more vulnerable to manipulation which is crucial for spintronics-based devices.