Volume: Page/Article: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Article Collection: View Collection Help (Click on the Check Box to add an article.) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Phys. Rev. B 52, 14704?14708 (1995) [Issue 20 ? 15 November 1995 ] [ Previous article | Next article | Issue 20 contents ] Add to article collection View Page Images , Figure Images or PDF (923 kB) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Fourfold anisotropy and structural behavior of epitaxial hcp Co/GaAs(001) thin films E. Gu, M. Gester, R. J. Hicken, C. Daboo, M. Tselepi, S. J. Gray, J. A. C. Bland, and L. M. Brown Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge, Madingley Road, Cambridge CB3 0HE, United Kingdom T. Thomson and P. C. Riedi Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of St. Andrews, St. Andrews, Fife KY 16 9SS, Scotland Received 1 June 1995 Thin Cr-capped Co films (thickness 50?150 Å) have been grown epitaxially on GaAs(001) single-crystal substrates by molecular-beam epitaxy. In contrast to other investigations, transmission electron diffraction reveals that the epitaxial Co films have a hexagonal-close-packed (hcp) structure with the epitaxial relationships (1-bar21-bar0)[0001]Co||(001)[110]GaAs and (1-bar21-bar0)[0001]Co||(001)[1-bar10]GaAs, i.e., the c axis of each crystallite is assigned to either the in-plane [110] or the [1-bar10] direction of the GaAs(001) substrate. In-plane magneto-optical Kerr-effect hysteresis loops and Brillouin light-scattering measurements show that the thinnest epitaxial hcp Co film (50 Å) has a dominant fourfold anisotropy with easy axes along the in-plane <100> directions and that a uniaxial anisotropy becomes dominant with increasing film thickness. We are able to account for the magnetic anisotropy properties of these epitaxial Co films in terms of their oriented hcp microstructure. ©1995 The American Physical Society URL: http://link.aps.org/abstract/PRB/v52/p14704 DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevB.52.14704 PACS: 75.70.-i, 75.30.Gw, 68.55.-a ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Add to article collection View Page Images , Figure Images or PDF (923 kB) [ Previous article | Next article | Issue 20 contents ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ References (Reference links marked with dot may require a separate subscription.) 1. G. A. Prinz, Phys. Rev. Lett. 54, 1051 (1985) . 2. F. Xu, J. J. Joyce, M. W. Ruckman, H. W. Chen, F. Boscherini, D. M. Hill, S. A. Chambers and J. H. Weaver, Phys. Rev. B 35, 2375 (1987) . 3. J. M. Florczak and E. Dan Dahlberg, Phys. Rev. B 44, 9338 (1991) . 4. P. C. Riedi, T. Dumelow, M. Rubenstein, G. A. Prinz and S. B. Qadri, Phys. Rev. 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