Abstract
We have performed room temperature Conversion Electron Mössbauer Spectroscopy (CEMS) on thin films and multilayers of DyFe2, YFe2 and HoFe2 under applied magnetic fields of 0 T and 0.25 T in plane. The samples were constructed by M.R. Wells and R.C.C. Ward using Molecular Beam Epitaxy on sapphire substrates giving single crystals with the [110] plane parallel to the surface. The samples produced and studied are: thin films of DyFe2, YFe2 and HoFe2; multilayers of DyFe2/YFe2 with respective layer thicknesses of 50 Å/50 Å, 40 Å/20 Å, 20 Å/40 Å and 20 Å/20 Å. In all spectra the fits obtained are different to those found in bulk samples: all the iron sites in the cubic Laves Phase unit cell are magnetically inequivalent and the spins on the iron atoms always have a component perpendicular to the layers. With a field of 0.25 T applied in the plane of the sample the iron spins in the YFe2 thin film are rotated into the plane by a large amount (8.5°) compared to only a minor change in the DyFe2 thin film (1°). In multilayer systems the iron atom spins in the YFe2 layers appear to be locked to those in the DyFe2 layers.
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