The structure of thin epitaxial Fe films on Cu(100) in the transition range fcc → bcc

Fourfold in-plane magnetic anisotropy in epitaxial Fe(110)/Cu(001) and Fe(110)/Ni(001) bilayers

“…Most experimental studies of Fe/Cu(0 0 1) films show the formation of a variety of structural and magnetic modifications of the g-Fe phase with thickness d Fe fewer than 11 monolayers [8][9][10][11][12][13]. Regardless of the deposition method used, at thicknesses d Fe 411 layers, the g-Fe growth becomes unstable and the bcc Fe(1 1 0) grows epitaxially on Cu(0 0 1) [14][15][16][17][18][19] and on Ni(0 0 1) [19,20]. Films grown in this way contain bcc Fe(1 1 0) domains growing in the Pitsch orientation relationship /0 1 1S(0 0 1)(Cu or Ni)99[1 1 1](1 1 0)Fe.…”

Spin-engineering in the Co75Fe25/Cu(110) system

“…The disappearance of the main spots could indicate a structural transition from fcc to bcc. Whilst such a transition is not observed in the pure Co on Cu(1 1 0) system it has been seen for Fe/Cu(1 1 0) and Fe/Cu(0 0 1) [48, 15,42]. Early studies of bulk Co x Fe 1 À x alloys found that different compositions crystallise in different structural phases, mostly favoring the bcc structure, Fig.…”

Strain-induced spin reorientation of bcc-like iron films grown on Cu(001)

“…(7). In previous works [2,9] the lattice parameter along the growing [110] b direction has been obtained by means of the I-V LEED technique, showing within the experimental error the match between the values of the film and the bulk lattice parameters. Therefore we assign xx ≈ 0.…”

“…(6) in the analysis of this in-plane change of easy axis the presence of a significant residual strain in the Fe(110) layer is mandatory. The Fe/Cu(001) is a well-known system because many sophisticated techniques had been used to characterize the crystal structure; here we use the results obtained by grazing-incidence high-energy ion beam techniques [13,17] and I-V LEED [9] to estimate the strain components and the strength of the ME terms of Eq. (4).…”

“…Driven by the magnetic exchange interaction, bulk Fe crystallizes in a ferromagnetic body-centered cubic (bcc) structure (α-Fe) at room temperature (RT) and exhibits a phase transition to a face-centered cubic (fcc) phase (γ -Fe) at 1184 K, which is stable up to 1665 K. The growth of Fe thin films on Cu(100) favors the epitaxial growth of the fcc phase in the low-thickness range, due to a small lattice mismatch of Cu (a Cu = 3.615Å) and fcc Fe (a fcc-Fe = 3.58Å, extrapolated value at RT). For Fe/Cu(001) grown via thermal evaporation at RT three different regimes have been identified regarding structural and magnetic properties in previous studies [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13]. A ferromagnetic (FM) phase with perpendicular orientation of the magnetization (regime I) is found for the lowest iron thicknesses, below ≈ 4 monolayers (MLs).…”