1. Morphological and compositional study at the Si/Fe interface of (Fe/Si) multilayer
- Author
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L. Badía-Romano, Germán R. Castro, Sergey Ovchinnikov, Javier Rubín, Fernando Bartolomé, Juan Rubio-Zuazo, S. N. Varnakov, Juan Bartolomé, César Magén, Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (España), Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation, European Commission, CSIC-UZA - Instituto de Ciencia de Materiales de Aragón (ICMA), Diputación General de Aragón, and Russian Government
- Subjects
Materials science ,Analytical chemistry ,Conversion electron Mössbauer spectroscopy ,Substrate (electronics) ,Reflectivity ,Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics ,Electronic, Optical and Magnetic Materials ,X-ray reflectivity ,chemistry.chemical_compound ,X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy ,Ferromagnetism ,chemistry ,Conversion electron mössbauer spectroscopy ,Phase (matter) ,Scanning transmission electron microscopy ,Silicide ,Fe silicides ,Magnetic nanostructures ,Fe–Si interlayer ,Electrical and Electronic Engineering - Abstract
Diffusion and reaction of elements at the interfaces of nanostructured systems play an important role in controlling their physical and chemical properties for subsequent applications. (Fe/Si) nanolayers were prepared by thermal evaporation under ultrahigh vacuum onto a Si(100) substrate. A morphological characterization of these films was performed by combination of scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) and X-ray reflectivity (XRR). The compositional depth profile of the (Fe/Si) structures was obtained by angle resolved X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (ARXPS) and hard X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (HAXPES). Moreover, determination of the stable phases formed at the Si on Fe interfaces was performed using conversion electron Mössbauer spectroscopy. The Si/Fe interface thickness and roughness were determined to be 1.4 nm and 0.6 nm, respectively. A large fraction of the interface is composed of c-Fe1-xSi paramagnetic phase, though a minoritary ferromagnetic Fe rich silicide phase is also present., The financial support of the Spanish MINECO MAT2011-23791, the President of Russia Grant (NSh-1044.2012.2), RFFI grant 13-02-01265, the Ministry of Education and Science of Russian Federation, projects GK14.B37.21.1276 and GK16.740.11.0740, Aragonese DGA-IMANA E34 (cofunded by Fondo Social Europeo) and that received from the European Union FEDER funds are acknowledged. L. B. R. acknowledges the Spanish MINECO FPU 2010 grant.
- Published
- 2014