Evolution of magnetic anisotropy in cobalt film on nanopatterned silicon substrate studied in situ using MOKE

•Magnetic properties of Co film on nanorippled Si substrate studied.•In situ MOKE used to study film thickness dependence of magnetic anisotropy.•Volume and surface contributions to anisotropy exhibit thickness dependence.•For low film thickness local magnetization follows the topography of the ripples.•With increasing thickness magnetization gradually becomes parallel to applied field. Evolution of magnetization behaviour of cobalt film on nano patterned silicon (1 0 0) substrate, with film thickness, has been studied. In situ magneto-optical Kerr effect measurements during film deposition allowed us to study genuine thickness dependence of magnetization behaviour, all other parameters like surface topography, deposition conditions remaining invariant. The nanopatterned substrate had a 8 nm thick amorphous silicon nitride surface layer. Thus, induced magnetic anisotropy in the Co film is expected to be of purely topographical origin, excluding any effect of the single crystalline Si (1 0 0) surface on magnetic anisotropy film due to possible epitaxy or surface step-induced anisoropy. In conformity with earlier results, the film induces a uniaxial magnetic anisotropy in the film, with its magnitude decreasing with increasing thickness. A magnetically dead layer of 2.6 nm forms at the interface with the substrate. Analysis of the magnetic layer thickness dependence of anisotropy shows that it has contributions from both, i) exchange energy which is volume dependent and, ii) stray dipolar fields at the surface/interface. This suggests that local magnetization follows only partially the topography of the rippled surface. As expected from energy considerations, for small film thickness, the local magnetization closely follows the surface contour of the ripples making the volume term as the dominant contribution. With increasing film thickness, the local magnetization gradually deviates from the local slope and approaches towards a uniform magnetization along the macroscopic film plane making the surface term as the dominant contribution. Significant deviation of the observed stray dipolar field contribution from the anisotropy energy calculated on the basis of Schlomann’s theory is observed, which can be attributed to several factors like, deviation of surface topography from an ideal sinusoidal wave, breaks of continuity along the ripple direction, topological defects like, pattern dislocations, and small film thicknesses compared to the correlation length of