title: Structural and electronic properties of epitaxial multilayer h-BN on Ni(111) for spintronics applications.
abstract: Hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) is a promising material for implementation in spintronics due to a large band gap, low spin-orbit coupling, and a small lattice mismatch to graphene and to close-packed surfaces of fcc-Ni(111) and hcp-Co(0001). Epitaxial deposition of h-BN on ferromagnetic metals is aimed at small interface scattering of charge and spin carriers. We report on the controlled growth of h-BN/Ni(111) by means of molecular beam epitaxy (MBE). Structural and electronic properties of this system are investigated using cross-section transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and electron spectroscopies which confirm good agreement with the properties of bulk h-BN. The latter are also corroborated by density functional theory (DFT) calculations, revealing that the first h-BN layer at the interface to Ni is metallic. Our investigations demonstrate that MBE is a promising, versatile alternative to both the exfoliation approach and chemical vapour deposition of h-BN.
authors.affiliation: Max Planck Institute of Microstructure Physics, Weinberg 2, 06120 Halle (Saale), Germany.|Institute for Physics of Microstructures RAS, 603950, GSP-105, Nizhny Novgorod, Russia.
authors.forename: A A
authors.initials: AA
authors.lastname: Tonkikh
authors.affiliation: Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Institut für Chemie, 10099 Berlin, Germany.
authors.forename: E N
authors.initials: EN
authors.lastname: Voloshina
authors.affiliation: Max Planck Institute of Microstructure Physics, Weinberg 2, 06120 Halle (Saale), Germany.
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Werner
authors.affiliation: Max Planck Institute of Microstructure Physics, Weinberg 2, 06120 Halle (Saale), Germany.
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Blumtritt
authors.affiliation: Institute of Solid State Physics, Dresden University of Technology, 01062 Dresden, Germany.|St. Petersburg State University, 198504 St. Petersburg, Russia.
authors.forename: B
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Senkovskiy
authors.affiliation: Max Planck Institute of Microstructure Physics, Weinberg 2, 06120 Halle (Saale), Germany.|2nd Institute of Physics and JARA-FIT, RWTH Aachen University, 52074 Aachen, Germany.
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Güntherodt
authors.affiliation: Max Planck Institute of Microstructure Physics, Weinberg 2, 06120 Halle (Saale), Germany.
authors.forename: S S P
authors.initials: SS
authors.lastname: Parkin
authors.affiliation: SPECS Surface Nano Analysis GmbH, Voltastraße 5, 13355 Berlin, Germany.
authors.forename: Yu S
authors.initials: YS
authors.lastname: Dedkov