AVS 51st International Symposium
    Nanometer-scale Science and Technology Monday Sessions
       Session NS-MoA

Paper NS-MoA7
Spin Polarized Electron Energy Loss Spectroscopy on Ferromagnetic Thin Films

Monday, November 15, 2004, 4:00 pm, Room 213D

Session: Magnetic Imaging and Spectroscopy
Presenter: T. Komesu, University of Missouri-Rolla
Authors: T. Komesu, University of Missouri-Rolla
G.D. Waddill, University of Missouri-Rolla
J.G. Tobin, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Correspondent: Click to Email
Spin-polarized electron energy loss spectroscopy (SPEELS) developed in the 1980s and has become a valuable technique for probing Stoner excitations and spin waves. SPEELS is sensitive to the occupied and unoccupied parts of the spin-split electronic structure of materials, and consequently SPEELS is a complementary technique to spin-resolved photoemission and inverse photoemission that more directly probe the occupied and unoccupied spin-split band structure respectively. Our results, using an unpolarized electron source with spin analysis shows sharp spin-dependent energy loss features in electron scattering from ferromagnetic thin films of Fe, Ni, and Co grown on Ag(100) and Cu(001). This is in contrast to most previous SPEELS studies (primarily using spin-polarized sources and spin analysis) where very broad featureless spectra are observed. We attribute the majority spin peaks we observe to spin-flip exchange scattering from the magnetic films, with the lowest energy feature corresponding to the exchange splitting for the films. The observed minority spin peaks are attributed non-flip exchange scattering.