Abstract
We demonstrate the strong effect of low-energy ion irradiation during the growth process on the structural and magnetic properties of Ce/Fe multilayers prepared by ion-beam sputtering in an UHV system. The heterostructures show good periodicity and sharp concentration profiles at the interfaces. For the non-irradiated samples, Fe grows in an amorphous structure below a critical Fe-layer thickness of 24 Å. In this low-thickness range, the spontaneous magnetization M S(0) and the ferromagnetic Curie temperature T C are anomalously small. Irradiation of the growing films reduces the critical thickness for amorphous growth of the Fe layers. The main consequence is the removal of the anomaly of M S(0) inherent to the amorphous Fe phase in the non-irradiated multilayers.
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