X-ray photoemission electron microscopy study of the in-plane spin reorientation transitions in epitaxial Fe films on W(110)

Prospects of X‐ray photoemission electron microscopy at the first beamline of the Polish synchrotron facility ‘Solaris’

“…For details concerning this SRT process, the reader is referred to. [13] From the methodological viewpoint it is important to note that the XPEEM images presented in Fig. 7 are single frames from a movie recorded during the Fe film growth and that the exposure time per frame was only 0.2 s. These results demonstrate the usefulness of the XPEEM technique for studying slowly varying physical processes in real time.…”

“…The best spatial resolution of approximately 15 nm was demonstrated using secondary electron imaging for self-organised Fe stripes prepared on a W(110) single crystal by annealing of a 10 ML (monolayer) thick Fe film at 600°C. [13] The acquisition time of the image presented in The resolution can be improved further by reducing chromatic aberrations using monoenergetic photoelectrons, [7] which was in our case limited by the available intensity of the X-ray beam. Nevertheless, considering the intrinsic contribution to the resolution resulting from the spatially extended edges of the several monolayers high Fe-stripe, the achieved resolution compares well with the best data reported for state of the art instruments.…”

“…The best spatial resolution of approximately 15 nm was demonstrated using secondary electron imaging for self‐organised Fe stripes prepared on a W(110) single crystal by annealing of a 10 ML (monolayer) thick Fe film at 600 °C . The acquisition time of the image presented in Fig.…”

Giant in-plane magnetic anisotropy in epitaxial bcc Co/Fe(110) bilayers

“…Our analysis assumes the presence of ferromagnetic exchange coupling between the Fe(110) film and the Co adlayer for all Co and Fe thicknesses. We studied the Fe-Co exchange coupling by using x-ray magnetic circular dichroism (XMCD) in a photoemission electron microscope (PEEM) temporarily installed [16,17] at the NanoXAS beamline [18] in Swiss Light Source. Figure 3 shows representative XMCD-PEEM images of the 15-Å-thick Co adlayer on 160-Å Fe(110)/W(110), acquired at the L3 edge of Fe (upper panel) or Co (lower panel).…”

Magnetic Anisotropy and Temperature Dependence of Exchange Bias in Epitaxial CoO(111)/Fe(110) Bilayers

“…We studied CoO/Fe(110) bilayers epitaxially grown on a W(110) single crystal substrate. In Fe(110) films on W(110), the magnetization rotates from the [1−10] to [001] in-plane direction above a critical thickness of spin reorientation transition (SRT) [5][6][7]. Such thicknessinduced in-plane SRT was shown to occur in variety of bilayers, such as Au/Fe(110), Ag/Fe(110) [8,9] or Co/Fe(110) [10,11] and Au/Co/Fe(110) [12].…”