Excellent soft magnetic and high frequency prop- erties were obtained successfully in the （Ni75Fe25）x（ZnO）1-x granular films fabricated on the glass substrate by RF magnetron oblique sputtering. The microstructure, mag- netic and high frequency properties were investigated systematically. High resolution transmission electron micrographs show that the film consists of fcc Ni75Fe25 particles uniformly embedded in an amorphous insulating matrix ZnO with particle size a few nanometers. The （Ni75Fe25）x（ZnO）1-x films exhibit excellent soft magnetic properties in a widex range from 0.50 to 0.80 with coer- civity not exceeding 5 × 10^-4 T, which is ascribed to the exchange coupling between magnetic particles. Especially for the sample with x = 0.64, coercivities in hard and easy axes are 5.0 ×10^-5 and 3.6 × 10^-4 T, respectively, and the electric resistivity ρ reaches 1,790 μΩ.cm. The dependence of complex permeability u = u′- ju″on frequency f shows that the real part u′ is more than 130 below 500 MHz, and the ferromagnetic resonance fre- quency fr reaches 1.32 GHz, implying the promising for high frequency application.
The effect of the volume fraction of ferromagnetic metal （x） in （Ni75Fe25）x（ZnO）1-x nanogranular thin films on microstructural, soft-magnetic, and high-frequency properties was investigated. Good soft-magnetic properties were obtained in a broad x range, with 0.55 〈 x 〈 0.82. High resolution transmission electron microscopy （HRTEM） observations reveal that the grain size of the samples is lower than 14 nm, and that it decreases with decreasing x. Of special interest, our investigation of the permeability spectra indicates that these films exhibit an adjustable frequency linewidth of resonance peak, dependant upon changing x. Correspondingly, large and adjustable damping coefficients （aeff） from 0.023 to 0.043 were achieved by decreasing x from 0.82 to 0.55. Combined with the HRTEM results, the variation of αeff with x was analyzed in detail.
