Epitaxial growth of Fe3Si/GaAs(001) hybrid structures

Abstract

We have established an optimized growth temperature range, namely, 150 °C<TG<250 °C, where ferromagnetic Fe3Si/GaAs(001) hybrid structures with high crystalline and interfacial quality can be fabricated by molecular-beam epitaxy. The composition of the Fe3Si layers, which can be regarded as a Heusler alloy, was tuned within the stable Fe3Si phase. The layers show high magnetic moments with a value of 1050 emu/cm3, which is close to that of bulk Fe3Si.

Fabrication of FeSi and Fe3Si compounds by electron beam induced mixing of [Fe/Si]2 and [Fe3/Si]2 multilayers grown by focused electron beam induced deposition

“…The distance capillary-substrate surface was about 1.7 mm. A number of samples were prepared by using F e(CO) 5 and…”

“…A self-made coaxial gas injection system (GIS) [21] was employed to introduce into the SEM the F e(CO) 5 and Si 5 H 12 precursors via a capillary of 0.5 mm inner diameter. The distance capillary-substrate surface was about 1.7 mm.…”

“…In this work, we fabricate Fe-Si binary compounds by using iron pentacarbonyl, F e(CO) 5 , and neopentasilane, Si 5 H 12 , as precursor gases. Our findings suggest that these precursors compete for adsorption sites and, therefore, cannot be used simultaneously for the fabrication of binary systems.…”

“…Our findings suggest that these precursors compete for adsorption sites and, therefore, cannot be used simultaneously for the fabrication of binary systems. In order to overcome this problem, we grow F e/Si multilayers by alternating deposition using F e(CO) 5 and Si 5 H 12 , followed by treatment by low energy electron irradiation and annealing to induce atomic species intermixing. In this way we are able to obtain the desired binary compounds.…”

“…F e 3 Si and F e 5 Si 3 are room-temperature ferromagnets attractive for spintronics [5,6]. In particular, F e 3 Si is a pseudo-Heusler alloy with D0 3 structure, equivalent to the L2 1 structure of full-Heusler compounds, which are predicted to be half-metallic [7,8].…”