Interface reaction of Ta/Ni81Fe19 or Ni81Fe19/Ta and its suppression

Ta/Ni81Fe19 and Ni81Fe19/Ta structures are commonly used in the magnetic multilayers with giant magnetoresistance. For a Ta/Ni81Fe19/Ta fundamental structure, Ta seed and Ta cap layers resulted in a loss of moment equivalent to a magnetically dead layer of thickness 1.6+/-0.2 nm. In order to find out the reason, the composition and chemical states at the interface regions of Ta/Ni81Fe19 and Ni81Fe19/Ta were studied using the x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and peak decomposition technique. The results show that there are thermodynamically favorable reactions at the Ta/Ni81Fe19 and Ni81Fe19/Ta interfaces: 2Ta+Ni=NiTa2. However, the thickness of a magnetically dead layer was significantly reduced by the insertion of a small amount of Bi in the Ta/Ni81Fe19/Ta structure. This result indicates that a surfactant Bi can suppress the interface reaction in multilayers. (C) 2002 American Institute of Physics.