Observation of uniaxial anisotropy along the [100] direction in crystalline Fe film

Abstract

We report an observation of uniaxial magnetic anisotropy along the [100] crystallographic direction in crystalline Fe film grown on Ge buffers deposited on a (001) GaAs substrate. As expected, planar Hall resistance (PHR) measurements reveal the presence of four in-plane magnetic easy axes, indicating the dominance of the 100 cubic anisotropy in the film. However, systematic mapping of the PHR hysteresis loops observed during magnetization reversal at different field orientations shows that the easy axes along the [100] and [010] are not equivalent. Such breaking of the cubic symmetry can only be ascribed to the presence of uniaxial anisotropy along the [100] direction of the Fe film. Analysis of the PHR data measured as a function of orientation of the applied magnetic field allowed us to quantify the magnitude of this [100] uniaxial anisotropy field as 6.6 +/- 0.9 Oe. Although this value is only 1.5% of cubic anisotropy field, its presence significantly changes the process of magnetization reversal, revealing the important role of the [100] uniaxial anisotropy in Fe films. Breaking of the cubic symmetry in the Fe film deposited on a Ge buffer is surprising, and we discuss possible reason for this unexpected behavior.