This paper shows the correlation between chemical order, lattice strains, and magnetic properties of Heusler Co2FeAl films epitaxially grown on MgO(001). A detailed magnetic characterization is performed using vector-field magnetometery combined with a numerical Stoner-Wohlfarth analysis. We demonstrate the presence of three types of in-plane anisotropies: one biaxial, as expected for the cubic symmetry, and two uniaxial. The three anisotropies show different behavior with the annealing temperature. The biaxial anisotropy shows a monotonic increase. The uniaxial anisotropy that is parallel to the hard biaxial axes (related to chemical homogeneity) decreases, while the anisotropy that is supposed to have a magnetostatic origin remains constant.

In this paper, we demonstrate the stabilization of perpendicular magnetic anisotropy (PMA) in Ta/Co₂FeAl/MgO multilayers sputtered on thermally oxidized Si(100) substrates. The magnetic analysis points out that these films show significant interfacial anisotropy even in the as-deposited state, $K_S=0.67\hspace{0.17em}{\text{erg}/\text{cm}}^2$ , enough to provide PMA for the as-deposited films with thicknesses below 1.5 nm. Moreover, the interfacial anisotropy is enhanced by thermal annealing up to 300 °C. The presence of a magnetic dead layer, whose thickness increases with annealing temperature, was also identified.

A modified TFA-MOD method, using only barium trifluoroacetate, is presented. The yttrium and copper triflouroacetates were replaced by the alcoholic solutions of Cu and Y acetates dispersed in propionic acid. Fourier transformed infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), thermal analyses (DTA/TG) coupled with mass spectrometry (MS) and X-ray diffraction analyses were used to study the decomposition of the precursor. The method permits the shortening of the pyrolysis time by a factor 4, with respect to conventional TFA-MOD method, due to the smaller amount of evolved hydrofluoric acid. Using this method 600 nm thick YBCO films were grown both on (100)SrTiO₃ and on CeO₂/YSZ/CeO₂/Pd buffered Ni-5at.%W substrates. The as obtained films exhibit good morphological, structural and superconducting properties with T_c (R=0) greater than 91K and with an out-of-plain texture of 0.24⁰ and 1.9⁰, respectively.