Phys. Rev. Lett. 65, 247-250 (1990)

                                                                      [Issue 2 - July 1990 ]

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Observation of vacuum tunneling of spin-polarized electrons with the scanning tunneling microscope

      R. Wiesendanger and H.-J. Güntherodt 
      Institute of Physics, University of Basel, Klingelbergstrasse 82, CH-4056 Basel, Switzerland

      G. Güntherodt 
      II. Institute of Physics, Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule Aachen, D-5100 Aachen, Federal Republic of Germany

      R. J. Gambino and R. Ruf 
      IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, New York, 10598

Received 27 March 1990

Vacuum tunneling of spin-polarized electrons from a ferromagnetic CrO2 tip into a Cr(001) single crystal has been observed by means of a scanning tunneling microscope (STM) operated in UHV.
Topographic STM images of the Cr(001) surface using a tungsten tip confirm the model of topological antiferromagnetism between ferromagnetic terraces separated by monatomic steps of 0.144 nm
height. With CrO2 tips, the measured step-height values alternate around the mean value of 0.144 nm due to an additional contribution from spin-polarized-electron tunneling.

©1990 The American Physical Society

URL: http://publish.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v65/p247
PACS: 75.30.Pd, 61.16.Di, 75.25.+z, 75.50.Ee