Transport properties of the Cu/Ni multilayer system

The electrical resistivity, Hall effect and magnetoresistance of Cu/Ni sputtered multilayer films were measured over the range 1.6-300K for a series of different layer periodicities Lambda . For small Lambda anomalies in the resistivity vs. T curves were observed which are interpreted as reflecting a reduction in the Curie temperature of these samples. The magnetoresistance at 4.2K increases with decreasing Lambda to approx9.3% for Lambda of 2.7 nm compared with 0.3% for a pure nickel film of 500 nm thickness. The anomalous part of the Hall resistivity also increases with decreasing Lambda , which suggests that the magnetic interface scattering might enhance the side-jump scattering.