AVS 47th International Symposium
    Magnetic Interfaces and Nanostructures Monday Sessions
       Session MI-MoA

Paper MI-MoA3
Growth and Magnetic Properties of Ultrathin Fe on Pd(110)@footnote 1@

Monday, October 2, 2000, 2:40 pm, Room 206

Session: Thin Films and Multilayers
Presenter: D. Li, Argonne National Laboratory
Authors: B. Roldan Cuenya, Argonne National Laboratory
J. Pearson, Argonne National Laboratory
C. Yu, Argonne National Laboratory
D. Li, Argonne National Laboratory
S.D. Bader, Argonne National Laboratory
Correspondent: Click to Email
While it is known that initial metal growth on Pd(110) surfaces is highly anisotropic and tends to form nanoscale wires, the magnetic properties of such systems are less studied. We have investigated the growth and magnetic properties of 0-3 ML Fe on a stepped Pd(110) with SMOKE, RHEED, and LEED in order to address the correlation among morphology, structure, and magnetic properties at low dimensions. The Fe films, grown at 70 °C, are flat and epitaxial up to 1.5 ML, where 3-dimensional growth starts. RHEED oscillations with 1-ML period were observed on the (1,0) and (2,0) streaks while an oscillation with a period of 0.5-ML exists on the (0,0) streak. The initial growth is pseudomorphic. The in-plane row spacing along the [110] direction starts to relax at ~ 0.5 ML and decreases by ~ 5% at 3 ML. The submonolayer Fe films remain ferromagnetic down to ~ 0.35 ML, below which the Curie temperature (T@sub C@) may become lower than our low-temperature limit of 25K. The T@sub C@ initially increases sharply with coverage and starts to saturate at 0.8-1 ML to ~210K. The magnetic easy axis is perpendicular to the surface for 0.4-0.7ML of Fe and in-plane for Fe thicknesses > 2 ML. Between 0.7-1.2 ML, there appear to be mixed magnetic phases as indicated by the co-existence of both polar and longitudinal Kerr signals, and an increase in coercivity. @FootnoteText@ @footnote 1@ Supported by DOE BES-MS #W-31-109-ENG-38 and ANL LDRD#00-001N. @footnote 2@ J.-P, Bucher, E. Hahn, P. Fernandez, C. Massobrio, and K. Kern, Europhysics Lett., 27, 473 (1994).