Growth behavior and intrinsic properties of vapor-deposited iron palladium thin films

Iron palladium based alloys are promising candidates to realize miniaturized magnetic shape memory devices on a thin film basis and also bear interesting magnetic properties, particularly for the area of magnetic recording. To address the impact of growth conditions on physical properties, thin vapor-deposited Fe70Pd30 films are analyzed with respect to structure, texture, and stress as a function of processing parameters. We find that deposition at room temperature leads to a bct structure, while deposition at elevated temperature as well as annealing results in austenitic films in the fcc phase, which is desirable for magnetic shape memory applications.