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

Invited Paper MI-MoA6
Magnetic Anisotropies in Ultra-Thin Films: The Spin-Reorientation Transition in Fe(110)/W(110)

Monday, October 2, 2000, 3:40 pm, Room 206

Session: Thin Films and Multilayers
Presenter: E. Vescovo, Brookhaven National Laboratory
Authors: E. Vescovo, Brookhaven National Laboratory
H.-J. Kim, Brookhaven National Laboratory
Correspondent: Click to Email
Reorientation of the easy axis of magnetization are not unusual in ultra-thin films. They are generally understood as the result of a delicate energy balance between three dimensional anisotropy terms - which favor the bulk easy-axis direction - and two-dimensional surface and interface terms - which can favor a different direction. Bulk contributions are proportional to the film thickness. Correspondingly, in thin films, there can be a critical thickness (t@sub R@) at which the two contributions balance exactly. In all those cases, a switch of the magnetization has to be expected when crossing t@sub R@. Fe(110) films epitaxially grown on W(110) display a spin reorientation phase transitions as a function of film thickness.@footnote 1@ This transition --- from the in-plane [110] direction to the [100] direction --- is characterized by a t@sub R@ of about 50 monolayers. Here we report on new spin- and angle-resolved photoemission experiments on this system. We show how t@sub R@ can be greatly varied by directly manipulating the Fe(110) surface. Furthermore, we explore the temperature dependence of the anisotropy balance and provide compelling evidence demonstrating that this in-plane spin reorientation transition can also be induced by varying the temperature, at constant thickness. @FootnoteText@ @footnote 1@ H.J. Elmers and U. Gradmann, Appl. Phys. A 51, 255 (1998)