Sergey Viktorovich Komogortsev

The disproportionation kinetics in thin GeO films produced by thermal evaporation on glass substrates was studied. Disproportionation was controlled using air annealing at temperatures ranging from 280 °C to 400 °C. According to the Raman spectroscopy data it was found that heating of germanium monoxide to 280 °C results in the formation of amorphous germanium, while, at 380 °C, the crystallization process starts. A simple way for determining the activation energy of disproportionation kinetics in GeO films is proposed and tested. The way is estimating the transformation time using the observation of film color evolution during annealing. It was found that this approach provides reasonable estimates of the disproportionation activation energy comparable to available data.

Multilayered [Cu(3 nm)/FeNi(100 nm)]₅/Cu(150 nm)/FeNi(10 nm)/Cu(150 nm)/FeNi(10 nm)/Cu(150 nm)/[Cu(3 nm)/FeNi(100 nm)]₅ structures were obtained by using the magnetron sputtering technique in the external in-plane magnetic field. From these, multilayer magnetoimpedance elements were fabricated in the shape of elongated stripes using the lift-off lithographic process. In order to obtain maximum magnetoimpedance (MI) sensitivity with respect to the external magnetic field, the short side of the rectangular element was oriented along the direction of the technological magnetic field applied during the multilayered structure deposition. MI sensitivity was defined as the change of the total impedance or its real part per unit of the magnetic field. The design of the elements (multilayered structure, shape of the element, etc.) contributed to the dynamic and static magnetic properties. The magnetostatic properties of the MI elements, including analysis of the magnetic domain structure, indicated the crucial importance of magnetostatic interactions between FeNi magnetic layers in the analyzed [Cu(3 nm)/FeNi(100 nm)]₅ multilayers. In addition, the uniformity of the magnetic parameters was defined by the advanced technique of the local measurements of the ferromagnetic resonance field. Dynamic methods allowed investigation of the elements at different thicknesses by varying the frequency of the electromagnetic excitation. The maximum sensitivity of 40%/Oe with respect to the applied field in the range of the fields of 3 Oe to 5 Oe is promising for different applications.

The generally accepted model of the magnetic structure of an iron oxide core–shell nanoparticle includes a single-domain magnetically ordered core surrounded by a layer with a frozen spin disorder. Due to the exchange coupling between the shell and core, the spin disorder should lead to nonuniform magnetization in the core. Suppression of this inhomogeneity by an external magnetic field causes the nonlinear behavior of the magnetization as a function of the field in the region of the approach to magnetic saturation. The equation proposed to describe this effect is tested using a micromagnetic simulation. Analysis of the approach to magnetic saturation of iron oxide nanoparticles at different temperatures using this equation can be used to estimate the temperature evolution of the core–shell coupling energy and the size of the uniformly magnetized nanoparticle core and the temperature behavior of this size.

The rectangular elements in magnetoimpedance (MI) configuration with a specific nanocomposite laminated structure based on FeNi and Cu layers were prepared by lift-off lithographic process. The properties of such elements are controlled by their shape, the anisotropy induced during the deposition, and by effects associated with the composite structure. The characterizations of static and dynamic properties, including MI measurements, show that these elements are promising for sensor applications. We have shown that competition between the shape anisotropy and the in-plane induced anisotropy of the element material is worth taking into account in order to understand the magnetic behavior of multilayered rectangular stripes. A possibility of the dynamic methods (ferromagnetic and spin-wave resonance) to describe laminated planar elements having a non-periodic modulation of both structure and magnetic parameters of a system is demonstrated. We show that the multilayered structure, which was originally designed to prevent the development of a “transcritical” state in magnetic layers and to reach the required thickness, also induces the effects that hinder the achievement of the goal, namely an increase in the perpendicular magnetic anisotropy energy.