Surface EXAFS study of metastable magnetic thin films

Epitaxial thin films provide new opportunities to explore the relationship between structure and magnetism. The bidimensionnal character of magnetic films deposited on single-crystal substrates and the occurrence of singular crystallographic structures often confer on these systems electronic and magnetic properties that cannot be found in the bulk solids. Although shape anisotropy would favour an in-plane easy axis of magnetization for thin films, Ni layers deposited on Cu(001) present a perpendicular magnetic anisotropy in a very wide thickness range. It is shown that this can be explained by a distorted structure of Ni, originating from the strain induced by the epitaxy on the Cu substrate. In the field of low-dimensional magnetism, nanostructures with a reduced lateral dimension are now being widely investigated in view of their technological applications. Thin Fe layers on MgO(001) can be cut into strips by the `atomic saw' method: a compression of the substrate induces a dislocation slipping which `saws' both the substrate and the Fe film into regular and separated ribbons. The observed magnetic anisotropy, with the easy axis perpendicular to the strips, is explained by a structural relaxation occurring during the structuration process. In these two studies, a precise structural characterization and simple magnetoelastic models allow the magnetic behaviour of the systems to be described. The structure of the films can be described as an elastic deformation of the bulk structure.