Fabrication of nanomagnet arrays by shadow deposition on self-organized semiconductor substrates

It is demonstrated how large-scale arrays of nanomagnets can be efficiently fabricated by shadow deposition onto faceted surfaces of self-organized Si1-xGex films. By pulsed laser deposition of Co in a grazing incidence geometry, we succeeded to cover just one selected type of facets resulting in isolated Co patches with an areal density of about 0.25X10(12)/in.(2). These uniformly oriented nanomagnets have a parallelogram-shaped base with about 25 nmX35 nm edge lengths. Magneto-optic Kerr effect measurements reveal a clear in-plane anisotropy of the nanomagnets. (C) 1999 American Institute of Physics. [S0003-6951(99)01004-9].