Magnetic properties of thermally deposited Fe/GaAs(100) thin films

Thin (50–200 Å) films of iron have been prepared on (100) gallium arsenide substrates by thermal evaporation at a deposition rate of 3–30 Å/s and a pressure of ～10^?5 torr. Dependences of the saturation magnetization, cubic and uniaxial planar anisotropy constants, and the ferromagnetic resonance linewidth on the film thickness were studied by ferromagnetic resonance at 9.8 GHz. It has been found that the parameters of thermally deposited Fe/GaAs (001) films are comparable to those achieved with molecular-beam epitaxy.