Regensburg 2010 – scientific programme

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O: Fachverband Oberflächenphysik

O 45: Electronic structure I

O 45.4: Talk

Wednesday, March 24, 2010, 11:15–11:30, H33

Ni/GaAs(001): Looking for a bcc signature with spin-resolved inverse photoemission — •Christian Eibl, Manuel Prätorius, André Berken, Anke B. Schmidt, and Markus Donath — Physikalisches Institut, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, 48149 Münster

To understand the interplay between crystal structure, electronic states, and magnetism, it is worthwhile to compare the different ferromagnetic elements. Unfortunately, at room temperature the thermodynamically stable crystal structures of Ni, Fe, and Co are face-centered cubic (fcc), body-centered cubic (bcc), and hexagonal close-packed (hcp), respectively. Thus, a direct comparison is hampered and scientists endeavor to crystallize Fe, Co, and Ni in a non-native structure.

Recently, it was shown by Tian et al. that Ni can be stabilized in the bcc structure on a GaAs(001) substrate. In contrast to the fcc structure, it was found that bcc Ni exhibits different magnetic properties, e.g., Curie temperature and magnetic anisotropy [1].

A crystallographic change from fcc to bcc is known to be reflected in the electronic structure [2]. Therefore we used a spin-resolved inverse photoemission experiment to look for characteristic bcc type fingerprints. Furthermore, we compared our results with measurements taken on (bcc-)Fe/Pd(001) and (fcc-)Ni/Cu(001).

[1] C.S. Tian et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 94, 137210 (2005)

[2] Donath et al., J. Phys.: Condens. Matter 21, 134004 (2009)