Room-temperature epitaxial growth of ferromagnetic Fe3Si films on Si(111) by facing target direct-current sputtering -: art. no. 262505

Ferromagnetic Fe3Si thin films with an extremely smooth surface morphology can be epitaxially grown on Si(111) at room temperature by facing target direct-current sputtering. The epitaxial relationship is Fe3Si(111)parallel to Si(111) with Fe3Si[1 (1) over bar0]parallel to Si[(1) over bar 10]. By the application of the extinction rule of x-ray diffraction, the generated Fe3Si was confirmed to possess a B-2 structure and not a DO3 one. The film showed a saturation magnetization value of 960 emu/cm(3), which was slightly lower than that of bulk DO3-Fe3Si. It was observed that the magnetization easy axis was along the [1 (1) over bar0] direction in the film plane. (c) 2005 American Institute of Physics.