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Journal of Applied Physics -- April 15, 1999 -- Volume 85, Issue 8 pp. 4961-4963

Modification of the magnetic properties of Fe/Cr(001) by controlling the compensation of a vicinal Cr(001) surface

Ernesto J. Escorcia-Aparicio, Hyuk J. Choi, J. H. Wolfe, W. L. Ling, R. K. Kawakami, and Z. Q. Qiu

Department of Physics, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, California 94720

The degree of compensation of a normally uncompensated Cr(001) surface is controlled by using a curved substrate with steps parallel to the [100] direction. In this way, the degree of frustration caused by steps at the interface between an Fe overlayer and the Cr substrate can be systematically varied. Previous work on flat Cr(001) at temperatures below the Cr ordering temperature (311 K) has identified a critical Fe thickness of ~ 35-38 Å, below which the Fe films display a reduced remanence. For our curved Cr substrate, below this critical Fe thickness three phases are observed for low (< ~ 2.5°), intermediate and high (> ~ 5°) miscut angle respectively: (i) multidomain; (ii) single domain with magnetization perpendicular to the step edges; and (iii) single domain with magnetization parallel to the step edges. At the same temperature, for Fe films above the critical thickness, region (i) disappears and only regions (ii) and (iii) remain. In a second experiment, the adsorption of submonolayer Au on the Fe is observed to increase the strength of the step-induced anisotropy and accordingly vary the position of the transition from regions (ii) to (iii). ©1999 American Institute of Physics.

PII: S0021-8979(99)39908-4
DOI: 10.1063/1.370058
PACS: 75.70.Ak, 75.50.Ee, 75.30.Pd, 75.60.Ej, 75.60.Ch, 75.70.Kw, 68.45.Da, 75.50.Bb        Additional Information

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Published by the American Institute of Physics Copyright © 2001 American Institute of Physics