Preparation of magnetically soft, highly-densified Fe cluster-assembled films by impact cluster deposition
Highly-densified Fe cluster-assembled films were obtained at room temperature by an energetic cluster deposition. Fe clusters were produced using a plasma-gas-condensation (PGC)-type cluster deposition apparatus with a high cluster productivity. Ionized clusters in a cluster beam were electrically accelerated and directly deposited onto a substrate together with neutral clusters from the same cluster source. By increasing the impact energy of the ionized clusters up to about 1 eV/atom, the obtained cluster-assemblies have packing fractions higher than 0.8 without any serious size change, and result in a soft magnetic behavior up to a frequency range of few hundred MHz.