Dense, adhesive and uniform Sm-Co alloy films were prepared by potentiostatic electrolysis on copper substrates in urea-acetamide-NaBr-KBr melt at 353 K, which were observed by SEM. The electroreduction of Co2+ and Sm3+ was investigated by cyclic voltammetry. The reduction of Co2+ is an irreversible process. Sm3+ can not be reduced alone, but Sm-Co can be co-deposited by induced deposition. The films could be crystallized by heat-treatment at different temperature from 723 to 923 K under Ar atmosphere. The annealed time was chosen as 30 s. The phases of deposited and annealed films were investigated by XRD. The content of Sm was analyzed by Inductive Coupled Plasma Emission Spectrometer (ICPES). The hysteresis loops of the Sm-Co alloy films have been measured by Vibrating Sample Magnetometer (VSM). The experimental results reveal that, the heat-treatment has important influence on coercive field Hc and remanent squareness S of Sm-Co alloy films; the deposited Sm-Co alloy films are amorphous, while the annealed those become polycrystalline; in addition, the magnetocrystalline anisotropy and preferring orientation of films depend strongly on the contents of crystal phases.
SmxCo5 (x=1.3, 0.7, 0.4) thin films were prepared by magnetron co-sputtering technique. The samples were annealed at 723 K under Ar atmosphere. The annealed time was chosen as 30 min. The hysteresis loops of the samples were measured under the ac applied magnetic field with the period Tp (2π/ω), H(t)=H0sin(ωt), by vibrating sample magnetometer (VSM). The experimental results indicate that, (1) the average hysteresis loop areas as functions of the values of H0 and ω display a power scaling law with the exponents, A=A0+H0αωβ; (2) the x composition of SmxCo5 film has evident effect on the scaling behavior and magnetic properties; (3) the anisotropy scaling exponents exist clearly in the anisotropy SmxCo5 thin films. Moreover, the scaling behavior of the anisotropy magnetic film was also simulated with Monte Carlo method. The simulated results are consistent with the experimental fact.
Transparent ZnO and Zn0.9(Co1-xSmx)0.1O (x=0.0, 0.10, 0.20, 0.30, 0.40, 0.50, 0.60, 0.70, 0.80, 0.90, 1.0) films were prepared by sol-gel method. For the prepared Zn0.9(Co1-xSmx)0.1O systems, the influences of dopant concentration of Sm on the structural and optical properties were investigated. Three additional absorption peaks around 570, 620, and 660 nm wavelengths were observed in low Sm content films, which is attributed to the d-d transitions of Co2+ ions in tetrahedral crystalline. The redshift of band gap in doped samples was discussed in detail.
One way of improving the magnetic properties of RECo5 (RE=rare earth) compounds, especially the magnetic anisotropy energy (MAE), is to dope them with some additives such as Fe, Ni, Cu. Those dopants bring changes in both lattice geometry and magnetic properties of the compounds. In this paper, the effects of doping on YCo5-xFex and YCo5-xAgx were studied in two simple but effective ways: first, the geometric effect induced by doping and then, the pure doping role namely without any geometric changes. The calculated results indicate that the magnetic moments of Co show a transition from a high spin state to a low one with the change of the volume of the cell in all YCo5, YCo3Fe2 and YCo3Ag2 alloys. The change of c/a ratio with constant lattice parameter a also influences drastically the magnetic moments and the MAE. As the geometric structure is not changed, it is found that the doping effects of magnetic element Fe and non-magnetic element Ag are quite different.
