Modern growth problems and growth techniques

The growth and characterization of magnetic materials has progressed substantially during the last decades. In this chapter we give a brief overview of this vastly growing field of research. We highlight some of the relevant growth techniques for different materials classes but we do not intend to be complete with respect to technical details or materials systems. We also outline some of the concepts and theories of the growth of modern magnetic materials, emphasizing the role of first principles calculations in providing microscopic understanding of the growth mechanisms. We discuss the growth of metallic and oxide single crystal films, multilayers and superlattices and the influence of thickness, strain, crystallinity, structure and morphology on the resulting magnetic properties.