title: Probing the Buried Magnetic Interfaces.
abstract: Understanding magnetism in ferromagnetic metal/semiconductor (FM/SC) heterostructures is important to the development of the new-generation spin field-effect transistor. Here, we report an element-specific X-ray magnetic circular dichroism study of the interfacial magnetic moments for two FM/SC model systems, namely, Co/GaAs and Ni/GaAs, which was enabled using a specially designed FM1/FM2/SC superstructure. We observed a robust room temperature magnetization of the interfacial Co, while that of the interfacial Ni was strongly diminished down to 5 K because of hybridization of the Ni d(eg) and GaAs sp(3) states. The validity of the selected method was confirmed by first-principles calculations, showing only small deviations (<0.02 and <0.07 μB/atom for Co/GaAs and Ni/GaAs, respectively) compared to the real FM/SC interfaces. Our work proved that the electronic structure and magnetic ground state of the interfacial FM2 is not altered when the topmost FM2 is replaced by FM1 and that this model is applicable generally for probing the buried magnetic interfaces in the advanced spintronic materials..
authors.affiliation: York-Nanjing Joint Center for Spintronics and Nanoengineering, School of Electronics Science and Engineering, Nanjing University , Nanjing 210093, China.|Spintronics and Nanodevice Laboratory, Department of Electronics, University of York , York YO10 5DD, U.K.|Department of Physics, The University of Hong Kong , Pokfulam, Hong Kong.
authors.forename: Wenqing
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Southeast University , Nanjing 211189, China.
authors.forename: Qionghua
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Zhou
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Southeast University , Nanjing 211189, China.
authors.forename: Qian
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: Spintronics and Nanodevice Laboratory, Department of Electronics, University of York , York YO10 5DD, U.K.
authors.forename: Daxin
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Niu
authors.affiliation: York-Nanjing Joint Center for Spintronics and Nanoengineering, School of Electronics Science and Engineering, Nanjing University , Nanjing 210093, China.|Department of Physics, The University of Hong Kong , Pokfulam, Hong Kong.
authors.forename: Yan
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Zhou
authors.affiliation: York-Nanjing Joint Center for Spintronics and Nanoengineering, School of Electronics Science and Engineering, Nanjing University , Nanjing 210093, China.|Spintronics and Nanodevice Laboratory, Department of Electronics, University of York , York YO10 5DD, U.K.
authors.forename: Yongbing
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Xu
authors.affiliation: York-Nanjing Joint Center for Spintronics and Nanoengineering, School of Electronics Science and Engineering, Nanjing University , Nanjing 210093, China.
authors.forename: Rong
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Southeast University , Nanjing 211189, China.
authors.forename: Jinlan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Magnetic Spectroscopy Group, Diamond Light Source , Didcot OX11 0DE, U.K.
authors.forename: Gerrit
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: van der Laan
keywords: XMCD; interface; magnetic dead layer; spintronics; superstructure