FMR study of strain-induced magnetic anisotropies in CrO2 thin films

Epitaxial CrO2 thin films were grown on TiO2 (100) single-crystalline substrates by chemical vapour deposition (CVD) process with use of CrO3 solid precursor. The films with different thickness (27–530 nm) were studied by Ferromagnetic Resonance (FMR) technique. Strong dependence of FMR signal on the film thickness was observed in the series of CrO2 films deposited onto the pre-etched TiO2 substrates. It is shown that the magnetic behaviour of the CrO2 films arises from competition between magnetocrystalline and strain anisotropies that favour the [001] and [010] magnetization directions, respectively. For the thinnest film the strain anisotropy dominates, and the magnetic easy axis switches from [001] to the [010] direction. On the contrary, the CrO2 film grown on the unetched substrate demonstrates essentially strain-free magnetic anisotropy behaviour. (© 2004 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)