Thickness Dependent Tetragonal Relaxation of Iron in Epitaxial Fe/Pd Multilayer Films

2000 
We have prepared (Fe(001)/Pd(001)) multilayers onto Pd-buffered sapphire substrates. Structural investigations utilizing HRTEM, RHEED and XRD show that the films grow epitaxially for up to 32 bilayers. Whereas the Fe lattice is found to assume the lateral (in-plane) lattice spacing of the underlying Pd layers, the out-of-plane lattice parameter along the [001] growth direction of the film is successively reduced with increasing Fe layer thickness. This outof-plane lattice relaxation even survives a subsequent growth of Pd onto the Fe. Thus, by varying the Fe layer thickness we have control of the atomic volume of Fe. Magnetization measurements reveal that the magnetic moment of Fe is as high as 2.7 µ B per atom when the atomic volume is larger than V at (Fe) ≥ 11.7 A 3 and is reduced to 2.2 µ B per atom for V at (Fe) ≤ 11.1 A 3 .
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