The Influence of Annealing on Temperature Dependencies of the Magnetoresistivity and Resistivity of Fe/Cr Multilayers

Using the thermal treatment for adjusting the giant magnetoresistivity (GMR) values in Fe(3 nm)/Cr(1.1 nm) multilayers, the temperature dependencies of resistivity and magnetoresistivity were examined. A reduction of the residual resistivities after the annealing processes at annealing temperatures lower than 300 °C was observed and simultaneously an increase of the magnetoresistivity was noted. Further annealing at higher temperatures degraded gradually the magnetoresistivity. Transport properties were found to be affected by two scattering mechanisms: electron–magnon scattering was dominant for the multilayers exhibiting higher GMR whereas electron–phonon scattering was more pronounced in samples with lower GMR.