JOURNAL OF MATERIALS SCIENCE-MATERIALS IN ELECTRONICS, cilt.31, sa.5, ss.4279-4286, 2020 (SCI-Expanded)
In this study, the influence of the seed layer deposition on the surface morphologies, structural and magnetic features of the thin film samples of Ni-Co was investigated and results are reported. The samples were produced on indium tin oxide (ITO)-coated glass substrates with and without a seed layer by electrochemical deposition technique under a constant deposition potential. To explore the effect of the seed layer current density (SLCD) on thin films, prior to actual deposition, Ni-Co seed layers were introduced on the ITO substrates at varying current densities. The EDX analysis indicated that the samples exhibited identical deposit compositions and an anomalous co-deposition behavior regardless of the SLCD. The Ni-Co samples fabricated under this study had a face centered cubic (fcc) phase structure with preferred crystallographic orientation being in the [111] direction perpendicular to the sample plane. Furthermore, the crystallite size, crystallinity, particle size and surface roughness of the samples showed a strong dependency on applied SLCD. All Ni-Co samples, irrespective of the SLCD, featured stripe magnetic domain structure and in-plane magnetic hysteresis loop with an out-of-plane magnetization component. It was also observed that while a semi-hard magnetic characteristic was detected in all samples, the coercive field varied with the SLCD.