Epitaxial growth of Fe/Ag single crystal superlattices and their magnetic properties

Single crystal Fe/Ag(001) superlattices with various periodicities were fabricated using ultrahigh vacuum evaporation deposition. It was found that single crystal bcc Fe layers and single crystal fcc Ag layers can epitaxially grow on a single crystal Ag buffer layer alternately, which was deposited on NaCl single crystal chips by ion beam assisted deposition. The magnetic measurements of the superlattices reveal an oscillation coupling between ferromagnetism and antiferromagnetism as a function of the Ag layer thickness. The oscillation period, which is 1 nm (5 Ag layers), is in good agreement with the calculated values when the Ag thickness is greater than 1.5 nm. While the thickness of the Ag spacer layer decreases to 1 nm, the oscillation coupling varies from calculations, which can be attributed to the intermixing of the interlayers according to the annealing results.