Studies of electrical resistivity and magnetic properties of CuFe and CuNiFe films prepared by magnetron sputtering

The Cu-Fe binary alloys exhibit severe elemental segregation, resulting in an inhomogeneous microstructure, which leads to differences in microregion magnetic properties, thus affecting their application. Employing magnetron sputtering to produce films is advantageous for achieving a consistent dispersion of Fe within the Cu matrix. Furthermore, the addition of Ni will result in a more uniform distribution of Fe and facilitate the formation of the ferromagnetic Ni3Fe phase. In this study, Cu100−xFex and Cu100−x(Ni3/4Fe1/4)x series films were prepared by magnetron sputtering technique. The magnetic properties of films are closely related to their ferromagnetic element content. An increase in the content of ferromagnetic elements leads to an improvement in the saturation magnetization (MS) strength and a decrease in the coercivity (HC). The formation of Fe-Fe pairs is more favorable for magnetic properties compared to Ni-Fe pairs. Meanwhile, by comparing with bulk alloys, the distribution of the magnetic elements severely affects the magnetic properties. Moreover, the resistivity of Cu100−xFex films (20.3–96.7 μΩ cm) is much higher than that of Cu100−x(Ni3/4Fe1/4)x films (15.6–60.6 μΩ cm), which depends on the magnetic properties. This study systematically analyzes the effect of the content and distribution of magnetic elements on magnetic and electrical properties.