Comparison of the in-plane coercive field and anomalous Nernst effect between a co-sputtered Sm–Co amorphous film and Sm/Co multilayer amorphous films with various layer thicknesses

Abstract

Abstract Recent research revealed that Sm–Co-based amorphous films prepared by stacking many ultrathin Sm/Co pairs exhibit large in-plane coercivity and realize the zero-field operation of the anomalous Nernst effect (ANE). Here, we investigate the effect of the Sm/Co-pair thickness on the magnetic anisotropy and ANE in Sm–Co-based amorphous films and compare them with a co-sputtered Sm–Co-based amorphous alloy film. We find that the magnetic (magneto-thermoelectric) properties of the co-sputtered film are almost the same as that of the multilayer films with the Sm/Co-pair thickness of ≤1.0 nm (≤3.0 nm). This finding will serve as a guideline for investigating amorphous magneto-thermoelectric materials.