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 de-position.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 measure-ments 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.