Magnetic properties of sputtered Permalloy/molybdenum multilayers

In this work, we report the magnetic properties of sputtered Permalloy (Py:Ni(80)Fe(20))/molybdenum (Mo) multilayer thin films. We show that it is possible to maintain a low coercivity and a high permeability in thick sputtered Py films when reducing the out-of-plane component of the anisotropy by inserting thin film spacers of a non-magnetic material like Mo. For these kind of multilayers, we have found coercivities which are close to those for single layer films with no out-of-plane anisotropy. The coercivity is also dependent on the number of layers exhibiting a minimum value when each single Py layer has a thickness close to the transition thickness between Neel and Bloch domain walls. (C) 2011 American Institute of Physics. [doi:10.1063/1.3647768]