Origin of ion bombardment induced Tb oxidation in Tb/Co multilayers

It has previously been shown that ion bombardment can used to selectively reduce the contribution of the rare earth sublattice in rare earth/transition metal ferrimagnets by selective oxidation. However, the exact mechanism by which oxidation occurs remains an outstanding question. Using this dataset, we show that the point defects introduced by ion bombardment of Tb/Co multilayers using different ion species with projected range (i.e., 10 keV He+, 15 keV O+, and 30 keV Ga+) create easy diffusion paths for oxygen to penetrate the system. This dataset includes:Magneto-optic measurements using P-MOKE magnetometer and Kerr effect microscopeSecondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) depth profilesIn-situ resistance measurements Input files for TRIDYN simulationsResults from TRIDYN simulations This work was supported by National Science Centre Poland under OPUS funding Grant No. 2020/39/B/ST5/01915 at the Institute of Molecular Physics of the Polish Academy of Sciences.