  We study the effect of sputter-deposition conditions, namely substrate
temperature and chamber base pressure, upon the interface quality of epitaxial
Pt/Co/Pt thin films with perpendicular magnetic anisotropy. Here we define
interface quality to be the inverse of the sum in quadrature of roughness and
intermixing. We find that samples with the top Co/Pt layers grown at 250
degrees C exhibit a local maximum in roughness-intermixing and that the
interface quality is better for lower or higher deposition temperatures, up to
400 degrees C, above which the interface quality degrades. Imaging the
expansion of magnetic domains in an in-plane field using wide-field Kerr
microscopy, we determine the interfacial Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction
(DMI) in films in the deposition temperature range 100 degrees C to 300 degrees
C. The net DMI is linked to the difference in top and bottom Co interface
qualities; the net DMI increases as the difference between top and bottom Co
interface quality increases. Furthermore, for sufficiently low base pressures,
the net DMI increases linearly with the deposition temperature, indicating that
fine-tuning of the DMI may be achieved via the deposition conditions.
