2019/02/09 by Mukul Gupta, Gupta, Mukul, Nidhi Pandey +12
Engineering · Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Chemical and Physical Properties of Materials #Electron and X-Ray Spectroscopy Techniques #FOS: Physical sciences #Ion-surface interactions and analysis #Magnetic Properties and Applications #Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) #Metallurgical and Alloy Processes #X-ray Spectroscopy and Fluorescence Analysis
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1902.03388
openalex publication_date 2019/02/09 · openalex created_date 2022/07/29 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We studied the structural and magnetic properties of \in-situ grown\niron mononitride (FeN) thin films. Initial stages of film growth were trapped\nutilizing synchrotron based soft x-ray absorption near edge spectroscopy\n(XANES) at the N K-edge and nuclear resonant scattering (NRS). Films were\ngrown using dc-magnetron sputtering, separately at the experimental stations of\nSXAS beamline (BL01, Indus 2) and NRS beamline (P01, Petra III). It was found\nthat the initial stages of film growth differs from the bulk of it. Ultrathin\nFeN films, exhibited larger energy separation between the t2g and eg\nfeatures and an intense eg feature in the N K-edge pattern. This indicates\nthat a structural transition is taking place from the rock-slat (RS)-type FeN\nto zinc-blende(ZB)-type FeN when the thickness of films increases beyond 5 ,nm.\nThe behavior of such N K-edge features correlates very well with the\nemergence of a magnetic component appearing in the NRS pattern at 100 ,K in\nultrathin FeN films. Combining the \in-situ XANES and NRS measurements,\nit appears that initial FeN layers grow in RS-type structure having a magnetic\nground state. Subsequently, the structure changes to ZB-type which is known to\nbe non-magnetic. Observed results help in resolving the long standing debate\nabout the structure and the magnetic ground state of FeN.\n