Reflection high energy electron diffraction as a tool in cluster deposition experiments
Reflection high energy electron diffraction (RHEED) is used to study the structure and orientation of mass-filtered iron clusters upon deposition ontoW(110). The present setup enables in situ investigations during deposition and thermal annealing. Particles as small as 2 nm at low density on the surface can be studied. The experiments reveal that larger particles with a diameter of about 13 nm are randomly oriented on the substrate with a preferred tendency to rest on their surface facets. Thermal annealing leads to a partial realignment and a significant flattening of the particles. In contrast 2 nm particles are found to align spontaneously in an epitaxial manner on W(110). Thermodynamic …
Size-dependent alignment of Fe nanoparticles upon deposition onto W(110)
Using in situ electron diffraction we study the orientation of mass-selected iron nanoparticles upon deposition onto single crystalline W(110) at room temperature. It is found that particles with a diameter below about 4 nm and a kinetic energy $\ensuremath{\le}0.1$ electron volt per atom spontaneously align with respect to the substrate. Larger particles preferentially rest with their (001) and (110) facets parallel to the surface, but do not show further alignment. The data may hint at thermally activated dislocation motions upon the impact on the substrate which are responsible for the observed orientation below 4 nm. By this uniformly oriented monodisperse nanostructures can be prepared…
Control of the Magnetic Configuration of Ferromagnetic Nanostructures Across the Structural Phase Transition of Vanadium Dioxide
We investigate the effect of the structural phase transition in VO 2 in magnetoelastically coupled heterostructures of VO 2 and Ni. Continuous and nano-patterned Ni layers were used, and we found reversible and reproducible magnetic domain switching induced by the VO 2 structural phase transition. The magnetic states of the nano-patterned ferromagnetic elements were dominated by topographic features which generated strong pinning but still allowed for a reversible switching between the states. Our measurements constitute a key step for the use of the VO 2 phase transition for ultrafast dynamical studies of the inverse mangetostrictive effect, and eventually employing the effect for ultrafas…
Full angular dependence of the spin Hall and ordinary magnetoresistance in epitaxial antiferromagnetic NiO(001)/Pt thin films
We report the observation of the three-dimensional angular dependence of the spin Hall magnetoresistance (SMR) in a bilayer of the epitaxial antiferromagnetic insulator NiO(001) and the heavy metal Pt, without any ferromagnetic element. The detected angular-dependent longitudinal and transverse magnetoresistances are measured by rotating the sample in magnetic fields up to 11 T, along three orthogonal planes (xy-, yz- and xz-rotation planes, where the z-axis is orthogonal to the sample plane). The total magnetoresistance has contributions arising from both the SMR and ordinary magnetoresistance. The onset of the SMR signal occurs between 1 and 3 T and no saturation is visible up to 11 T. Th…
Magnetization reversal of the domain structure in the anti-perovskite nitride Co3FeN investigated by high-resolution X-ray microscopy
We performed X-ray magnetic circular dichroism (XMCD) photoemission electron microscopy imaging to reveal the magnetic domain structure of anti-perovskite nitride Co3FeN exhibiting a negative spin polarization. In square and disc patterns, we systematically and quantitatively determined the statistics of the stable states as a function of geometry. By direct imaging during the application of a magnetic field, we revealed the magnetic reversal process in a spatially resolved manner. We compared the hysteresis on the continuous area and the square patterns from the magnetic field-dependent XMCD ratio, which can be explained as resulting from the effect of the shape anisotropy, present in nano…