Kinetic Stabilization and Magnetism of Fe Films on NiO(001)

Abstract

Kinetic stabilization of the interface between Fe and NiO films is achieved by growing Fe films on NiO films at low temperature (<= 90 K) as revealed by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. This allows us to examine the effects of the interface coupling on the exchange bias of the Fe film due to the NiO film. No definite exchange bias of Fe film is, however, observed for (<= 3 ML) ultrathin NiO films in an X-ray magnetic circular dichroism study. This tells us that exchange bias between Fe and NiO does not originate solely from the coupling between Fe and NiO at the interface.