Magnetic properties of SmCo/Fe/SmCo trilayer films

Sm22Co78/Fe/Sm22Co78 trilayers with 30% volume fraction of Fe layer were deposited on Cr/glass substrates by magnetic sputtering. All the samples have in-plane anisotropy and their hysteresis loops were single-phase types, indicating that the two phases exhibit strong exchange coupling. The reduced remanence of the trilayer system is significantly increased with the increasing thickness of Fe layer (d), the coercivity of the trilayer also increased for the layer with d<40nm, and have a maximum value at 13nm for 30% volume fraction of Fe layer. The magnetic interaction studies indicated that positive and negative exchange couplings were different for different d values.