Influence of the working gas pressure on the magnetic properties and texture of magnetron-sputtered Fe/SiO$_{2}$/Si(100) polycrystalline films

The magnetic properties and texture of 90-nm-thick polycrystalline Fe/SiO$_{2}$/Si(100) films magnetron-sputtered under different working gas pressures are investigated. It is shown that when the pressure declines, the magnetization of the films may grow by 50%, whereas the ferromagnetic resonance linewidth and the coercive force may decrease by more than an order of magnitude. Such variations of the magnetic properties correlate with a Fe(110) to Fe(200) change in the film texture and with the columnar to quasi-uniform microstructure transition.