Diffusion amorphization and interface properties of FeB multilayers

Interfaces in sequence permutated multilayers

“…The spectrum belonging to x=0 is in accordance with the results obtained earlier for Fe-B multilayers [3]. The 2 nm Fe layers are fully intermixed with B and according to the fitted HF distribution, shown in Figure 2b alloys disappears [5], the presence of magnetic components even at room temperature indicates that the 2 nm B layers are not fully mixed with Fe.…”

“…For x=5 and 10 the measured spectra agree within the experimental errors and can be described by two slightly broadened (Γ 1 =0.326(4) and Γ 2 =0.382(4) mm/s) sextets and a HF distribution. The two sextets (HF 1 =32.25(1) and HF 2 =30.24(10) T) can be attributed to the bulk and surface contributions of crystalline Fe layers in contact with Ag layers [6,7], while the broad HF distribution belongs to the amorphous B/Fe interfaces [3]. According to the line intensities there are an equal number of Fe atoms that belong to the amorphous B/Fe interface and to the crystalline Fe layer.…”

“…In order to distinguish the bottom and top interfaces of the Fe layer a third element is interleaved, and the multilayers composed of three different elemental layers are deposited by sequence permutation in two different forms, as it is illustrated in figure 1. The Fe/B multilayer system was chosen [2] to be studied this way because a significant mixing of the elements accompanied by solid state amorphization occurs at the interfaces [3] already during the sample deposition and Ag was interleaved since it does not mix with either of the two elements: both Fe-Ag and B-Ag are non-mixing element pairs. The sequence permutated sample pairs can be prepared simultaneously in such a way that two of the building blocks (e.g.…”

Interface mixing in Fe–B–Ag multilayers

“…The spectra evidently depend strongly both on the thickness of the Fe and the B layers and on the layer sequence. The dependence on the thickness of the Fe and the B layers is qualitatively in agreement with the trends observed for Fe-B multilayers [5]. For Fe layer thickness smaller than the range of interface mixing only spectra of amorphous Fe-B can be observed and the HF distributions strongly depend on the ratio of the Fe and the B layer thickness.…”

“…For Fe layer thickness smaller than the range of interface mixing only spectra of amorphous Fe-B can be observed and the HF distributions strongly depend on the ratio of the Fe and the B layer thickness. When the Fe layer thickness is larger than the range of interface mixing a sub-spectrum characteristic to pure bcc-Fe layer can be identified as a sharp peak of the HF distribution close to 33 T. This was found to occur above 2 nm Fe layer thickness [5] in case of Fe-B multilayers, where both bottom and top interfaces of Fe were formed by B intermixing. In the present case bcc-Fe like layer appears roughly above 1 nm for both layer sequences, as it can be deduced both from the ratio of the sharp sextets in the spectra of samples A1 and B1 and from the lack of sharp sextets in case of samples A2 and B2.…”