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%.