Ultra thin Ni films on singular and vicinal GaAs substrates

摘要

The integration of ferromagnetic metal films with semiconductors has been of great interest in recent years due to the possibility to realise spin-based devices, such as spin polarised transistors, spin LEDs and many more [1]. Amongst these ferromagnetic hybrid systems, Fe on GaAs(001) has been relatively well studied [2], whereas comparatively little attention has been given to the Ni/GaAs system. Furthering the previously observed substrate dependence of Ni's magnetic character [3], we herein carry out a detailed study of the magnetic properties of Ni thin films on a variety of GaAs substrates.