Molecular beam epitaxial growth of single-crystal Fe films on GaAs

Abstract

Molecular beam epitaxy methods have been used to grow good quality magnetic single-crystal films of bcc Fe on fcc GaAs substrates. These films were characterized by Auger, reflection high energy electron diffraction (RHEED) and ferromagnetic resonance (FMR) techniques. Both RHEED and FMR indicate that the best crystal quality occurs for substrate temperatures in the 175–225 °C range. For 200-Å films the Fe surface lattice constant agrees with that of bulk α-Fe.