Ion Irradiation Induced Cobalt/Cobalt Oxide Heterostructures: From Materials to Devices.

The demand on high data transfer and storage capacities requires smaller devices to transmit or save data. Forming well-defined ferromagnetic and electrically conducting volumes within a non-magnetic and insulating matrix in the dimensions of several nanometers can pave a way to the production of such small devices. It has been demonstrated that the reduction of oxygen in Co₃O₄/Pd multilayers is possible via local proton irradiation resulting in ferromagnetic and conducting Co embedded in a nonmagnetic and insulating Co₃O₄ matrix [1]. However, the physical mechanism behind the ion irradiation-induced oxide reduction was not addressed clearly. There are two possible mechanisms suggested to play a role behind this oxide reduction. The first one is the chemical reduction of oxygen by reacting with implanted H+ ions, while the second possible mechanism is atomic displacements induced by ion irradiation. To address this issue, we analysed cobalt oxide thin films after irradiation with H+ and Ne+ ions at different doses. The irradiation parameters for Ne+ were chosen to give the same displacements per atom (dpa) as that of H+ which is required to reduce cobalt oxide. We also confined irradiated areas on the films in the range of microns to submicron, in order to ascertain the lateral distribution of oxygen after irradiation.
We prepared single layer films of CoO (6-12nm) and Co₃O₄ (10nm) capped with Pt protection layers. Broad-beam H+ irradiations were performed at 0.3 keV for ion doses ranging from 10¹⁵ to 10¹⁷ ions/cm² on unpatterned films. After irradiation the films were characterized structurally and magnetically and compared to un-irradiated films. Extended films showed approximately 7% of the Co bulk metal saturation magnetization (MS) after irradiation at a dose of 5 x 10¹⁶ ions/cm² (fig. 1a inset). The increase is more pronounced with Co₃O₄ than CoO (fig. 1a). A sample was also prepared with a striped irradiation mask of 40 μm pitch. These films showed a higher magnetization after irradiation at lower doses as compared to unpatterned films, 0.14 MA/m for a dose of 10¹⁶ ions/cm² (striped) as opposed to 0.025 MA/m (extended) for a dose of 10¹⁷ ions/cm².
Figure 1 (b) shows the effect of stripe width (0.5, 5, 10, 20 μm) on the resulting magnetization after H+ irradiation at the same energy with a dose of 10¹⁷ ions/cm². No clear correlation between stripe width and MS was seen in either oxide phase for stripes down to 0.5 μm. However, the CoO sample with 0.5 μm stripes and a thinner oxide thickness of 6 nm (gold line) as opposed to 12 nm exhibited larger MS after irradiation, indicating oxygen displacements occur in the first few nanometers of the oxide.
We also performed 5 keV Ne+ irradiations with the helium-ion microscope (HIM) varying the ion dose from 10¹⁴ to 10¹⁶ ions/cm². After Ne+ irradiations magnetic force microscopy (MFM) images were taken along with a topography image in the remnant state (fig. 2). Starting from the ion dose of 5x10¹⁴ ions/cm², a magnetic contrast could be observed by MFM, suggesting that oxygen atoms were successfully removed locally by reducing paramagnetic CoO to ferromagnetic Co. The formation of topographical bubbles was observed upon increasing the ion dose from 10¹⁵ ions/cm² to 10¹⁶ ions/cm². The lateral and horizontal sizes of the observed bubbles show a clear dependence on the ion dose with a narrow size distribution.
In conclusion, our results show that, oxygen removal by means of H+ irradiation is more efficient in Co₃O₄ films as opposed to CoO. Additionally, although there is little dependence of the resulting Ms on the pitch of the stripes (in the range of 0.5 - 20 μm), the use of a stripe mask has a more pronounced effect on the oxygen removal process as compared to the irradiations on extended films. Therefore, the physical mechanism behind the ion-irradiation induced oxide reduction process cannot purely be a chemical reaction between oxygen and hydrogen. As an outlook, the lateral size and spacing of the ferromagnetic regions generated by H+ irradiation is only limited by the resolution of EBL. This method and the successful formation of ferromagnetic regions upon Ne+ irradiation using the HIM can be exploited to print smaller, closer and synchronized contacts for nanocontact spin torque oscillators.