In-plane magnetic surface anisotropies in Fe(110)

In-plane magnetic surface anisotropies have been detected for Fe(110) on W(110) using in situ Conversion Electron Mössbauer Spectroscopy (CEMS). The phenomenon used for the determination of this anisotropy was a switching of the spontaneous magnetizationJ _s from 001] to 1¯10] with decreasing thickness. Analysis of the data is performed using a homogeneous magnetization approximation for competing surface and bulk anisotropies, which is justified by a micromagnetic analysis and established experimentally by CEMS. In-plane surface anisotropy constants for the clean Fe(110) surface, the Fe metal-interface and the FeGaAs interface are determined toK _s,p ^FeUHV =0.065 erg·cm^–2,K _s,p ^FeMetal =0.040 erg ·cm^–2, andK _s,p ^FeGaAs =0.047 erg ·cm^–2, all with an estimated accuracy of the order of 10%.