Structure and magnetism of epitaxial rare-earth-transition-metal films

摘要

Growth of epitaxial transition-metal superlattices; has proven essential in elucidating the role of crystal orientation and structure on magnetic properties such as giant magnetoresistance, interlayer coupling, and magnetic surface anisotropies. Extending these studies to the growth of epitaxial rare earth-transition metal (RE-TM) films and superlattices promises to play an equally important role in exploring and optimizing the properties of hard magnets. For instance, Skomski and Coey predict that a giant energy product (120 MG Oe) is possible in multilayer structures consisting of aligned hard-magnet layers exchanged coupled with soft-phase layers with high magnetization. Epitaxy provides one route to synthesizing such exchange-hardened magnets on controlled length scales. Epitaxial growth also allows the magnetic properties to be tailored by controlling the crystal orientation and the anisotropies of the magnetic layers and holds the possibility of stabilizing metastable phases. This paper describes the epitaxy and magnetic properties for several alloys.