Determination of grain shape of laser-irradiated FePdCu thin alloy films

Abstract

The irradiation with the 10 ns pulsed infrared Nd:YAG laser was applied to transform FePdCu multilayers into chemically ordered L10 phase. The X-ray diffraction methods (Theta/2Theta scan, psi-scan, omega-scan) were used to trace the presence of L10 phase after laser annealing with different number of pulses. The size and shape of crystallites was determined depending on their orientation with respect to film plane. The (111) oriented crystallites of constituent metals were built as coherent domains spreading through multilayers during deposition of films. Laser annealing induced the transformation of multilayers to alloy, and the ordering of (111) oriented crystallites. Simultaneously, the (002) oriented crystallites appeared confirming the transformation to L10 alloy.