Abstract
Amorphous thin films of GdxCo1−x, HoxCo1−x, GdxFe1−x, and YxFe1−x (0.1<x−1. Upon annealing at 500 °C, this diffuse ring is transformed into a set of closely spaced Bragg maxima that correspond to Gd2O3 crystallites. All of the films exhibit large biaxial tensile stresses in the as‐deposited state. These are reduced by deposition in oxygen and by bias‐sputter deposition. Tensile stress and perpendicular magnetic anisotropy are linearly correlated in Gd‐Co alloys, but the magnetostrictive contribution to perpendicular anisotropy is only 0.01 of the observed value.