Enhancement of uniaxial magnetic anisotropy in Fe thin films grown on GaAs(001) with an MgO underlayer

Sakshath, S and Bhat, SV and Kumar, Anil PS and Sander, D and Kirschner, J (2011) Enhancement of uniaxial magnetic anisotropy in Fe thin films grown on GaAs(001) with an MgO underlayer. In: Journal of Applied Physics, 109 (7).

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Abstract

The understanding and control of anisotropy in Fe films grown on cubic systems such as GaAs and MgO has been of interest from the point of view of applications in devices. We report magnetic anisotropy studies on Fe/GaAs(001) and Fe/MgO/GaAs(001) prepared by pulsed laser deposition. In Fe/GaAs(001), magneto optical Kerr effect (MOKE) measurements revealed a dominant uniaxial anisotropy for Fe thickness less than 20 monolayers (ML) and this was confirmed by ferromagnetic resonance (FMR) studies. Multiple steps in the hysteresis loops were observed for Fe films of thickness 20 and 25 ML. Whereas, in Fe/MgO/GaAs(001), even at 25 ML of Fe, the uniaxial anisotropy remained dominant. The anisotropy constants obtained from FMR spectra have shown that the relative strength of uniaxial anisotropy is higher as compared to the cubic anisotropy constant in the case of Fe/MgO/GaAs(001). (C) 2011 American Institute of Physics. doi:10.1063/1.3556941]

Item Type:	Journal Article
Publication:	Journal of Applied Physics
Publisher:	American Institute of Physics
Additional Information:	Copyright of this article belongs to American Institute of Physics.
Department/Centre:	Division of Physical & Mathematical Sciences > Physics
Date Deposited:	22 Jun 2011 09:17
Last Modified:	22 Jun 2011 09:17
URI:	http://eprints.iisc.ac.in/id/eprint/38417

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