We have studied the uniaxial magnetic anisotropy of Co/Pd superlattices grown under identical conditions by molecular-beam epitaxy along the three crystal axes: [001], [110], and [111]. Our measurements unambiguously demonstrate that the large systematic variations of the anisotropy energy with crystal orientation result solely from differences in the volume contribution to the anisotropy. We find the perpendicular interface anisotropy to be independent of the epitaxial orientation (0.63 ± 0.05 erg/cm 2 ), and hence to be an intrinsic property of the Co/Pd interface.

We have calculated the energy distributions of sputtered Nb and Cu atoms ejected from amorphous targets under low-energy Ar bombardment. A formula based on elementary kinetic gas theory is used to calculate the subsequent energy loss of the ejected atoms due to collisions in the sputtering gas. The energy distributions of the sputtered atoms arriving at the substrate is compared with the distributions obtained using thermal evaporation techniques. This comparison indicates that the preparation of epitaxial metallic films, such as Layered Ultrathin Coherent Structures using sputtering techniques may have fundamental advantages over thermal evaporation.

PSS/CuNW films have optical transmittance T550 = 84.2% (at λ = 550 nm) and sheet resistance Rs = 25 Ω/sq, while our best CuNW/rGO films have T550 = 84% and Rs = 21.7 Ω/sq.