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Interplay between anisotropic strain relaxation and uniaxial interface magnetic anisotropy in epitaxial Fe films on
O Thomas1, Q Shen, P Schieffer
1Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York 14853, USA.
Physical Review Letters
|February 7, 2003
Abstract:
Grazing incidence x-ray diffraction study of Fe epitaxial ultrathin films (1.5-13 nm) on GaAs (001) reveals an anisotropy of both domain shape and strain, with [110] and [1-10] as the principal directions. It is shown that the observed thickness-dependent strain anisotropy, together with a uniaxial interface term, can provide an unambiguous explanation to the usual in-plane magnetic anisotropy and its thickness dependence observed in this magnetic thin-film system.