  Epitaxial hcp Cobalt films with pronounced c-axis texture have been prepared
by pulsed lased deposition (PLD) either directly onto Al2O3 (0001) single
crystal substrates or with an intermediate Ruthenium buffer layer. The crystal
structure and epitaxial growth relation was studied by XRD, pole figure
measurements and reciprocal space mapping. Detailed VSM analysis shows that the
perpendicular anisotropy of these highly textured Co films reaches the
magnetocrystalline anisotropy of hcp-Co single crystal material. Films were
prepared with thickness t of 20 nm < t < 100 nm to study the crossover from
in-plane magnetization to out-of-plane magnetization in detail. The analysis of
the periodic domain pattern observed by magnetic force microscopy allows to
determine the critical minimum thickness below which the domains adopt a pure
in-plane orientation. Above the critical thickness the width of the stripe
domains is evaluated as a function of the film thickness and compared with
domain theory. Especially the discrepancies at smallest film thicknesses show
that the system is in an intermediate state between in-plane and out-of-plane
domains, which is not described by existing analytical domain models.
