Magnetic behavior of nanostructured Fe films measured by magnetic dichroism

The magnetic properties of Fe nanostructured films have been studied using magnetic linear and circular dichroism in x-ray photoemission spectroscopy. The samples were prepared by the deposition of nanoscale Fe clusters, size 1-4 nm, onto thin Cu films. The linear dichroism, which is used to measure the in-plane magnetization, increases with increasing film thickness, with a sharp increase between 1 and 1.5 ML coverage. The circular dichroism, which measures the out-of-plane magnetization, is zero within the experimental error at all thicknesses studied. Capping an Fe film with an ultrathin Pd layer results in a factor of 3 decrease of the linear dichroism response.