Abstract
The influence of PtMn composition and post-annealing on the structure and the exchange bias of epitaxial PtMn(150 Å)/Ni <sub>80</sub> Fe <sub>20</sub> (50 Å) films using multilayer growth of [Mn(2 Å<XÅ<3.2 Å)/Pt (2 Å)] <sub>N</sub> was studied. The optimal H <sub>ex</sub> increases to ∼360 Oe after annealing at 250 °C for 18 h. The X-ray diffraction study indicates that the integrated intensity of the FCT PtMn(1 1 0) diffraction peak scales quite well with the exchange biasing field and order parameter. © 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.