We study interlayer exchange coupling in epitaxial Fe/Fe(0.56)Si(0.44)/Fe trilayers. Iron-silicide spacers with high structural and compositional homogeneity for thicknesses up to 34 A are grown by coevaporation from two electron-beam sources. The coupling strength oscillates with spacer thickness for temperatures from 20 to 300 K with two antiferromagnetic maxima at 12 and 26 A, and it clearly increases with decreasing temperature down to 80 K. We conclude that the coupling across ordered Fe(1-x)Si(x) ( x approximately 0.5) is described by the conventional theory of interlayer coupling across metallic spacers.

Fe͑5 nm͒/Si͑0.8 -2 nm͒/Fe͑5 nm͒ structures are grown by molecular-beam epitaxy on Ag͑001͒ buffered GaAs substrates. Ferromagnetic tunneling junctions with crossed electrodes and junction areas ranging from 22 to 225 m 2 are patterned using photolithography. Antiparallel alignment of the magnetizations due to antiferromagnetic interlayer coupling, which is confirmed by longitudinal magneto-optical Kerr effect hysteresis loops, exists for the whole range of spacer thicknesses. Transport properties in current perpendicular to the sample plane geometry are examined by the four-point method in the temperature range from 4 K to room temperature. As a function of spacer thickness, the junctions show a strong increase of the resistance times area product from Ϸ1 ⍀ m 2 to more than 10 k⍀ m 2 . The dI/dVϪV curves are parabolic and asymmetric and thus characteristic for trapezoidal tunneling barriers. The mean barrier heights derived from Brinkman fits range from 0.3 to 0.8 eV. The zero-bias resistance of the tunneling junctions moderately decreases with temperature by less than 10% over the whole measured temperature range. All these transport properties fulfill the necessary and sufficient criteria for elastic tunneling.

We present a simple approach based on continuum theory to calculate spin-wave frequencies in thin magnetic multilayers taking into account both the nonuniform static and dynamic magnetizations, which are present in systems with strong interlayer exchange coupling. The calculation includes in-plane static magnetization, the canted and twisted state, bilinear and biquadratic interlayer exchange coupling, and the dynamic dipolar coupling. Therefore, we are able to compute accurate spin-wave frequencies in strongly antiferromagnetic coupled trilayers over a full hysteresis loop. We consider the field dependence of the spin-wave frequencies of an epitaxial Fe͑001͒/Si-wedge/Fe sample with strong antiferromagnetic coupling measured by Brillouin light scattering and find excellent agreement with the model calculation. The fits of the experimental curves verify the existence of the twisted state and allow determining the coupling constants with high precision.

The nearest-neighbor coordination and electronic structure in C:Ni(∼30 at.%) nanocomposite films grown by ion beam cosputtering in the temperature range of room temperatue (RT) to 500 °C are investigated by the means of extended X-ray absorption fine structure (EXAFS), X-ray absorption near-edge spectroscopy (XANES) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). The obtained results are correlated with the composite nanostructure published elsewhere and magnetic properties determined by the means of X-ray magnetic circular dichroism (XMCD) and superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID) magnetometry. A combined use of EXAFS, XANES, and XPS shows that a carbidic Ni phase exhibiting only local atomic ordering is formed at low growth temperatures (e200 °C), while ordered carbidic Ni phase forms at ∼300 °C. Further increase in growth temperature results in the formation of face-centered cubic (fcc) Ni with a high degree of crystallinity. On the other hand, Ni incorporation strongly promotes the formation of carbon structures with the prominent peak in C K-edge XANES spectra positioned at 288.5 eV in the whole growth temperature range. The magnetic measurements show no magnetic response for the films grown at RT to 200 °C, superparamagnetic behavior for the film grown at 500 °C with >90% of the Ni atoms in metallic state, and a weak magnetic response for the film grown at 300 °C, indicating the presence of Ni-rich regions within carbon containing Ni nanoparticles with ∼3% of Ni atoms in metallic state.