Magnetic band structure at the Fe/GaAs(100) interface

Abstract

Using inverse photoemission, the uppermost minority spin d band of Fe on GaAs(110) is found to move down by 0.9 eV for the first layer. This indicates a nearly complete collapse of the ferromagnetic exchange splitting at the interface. The decrease happens over a range of about 100 Å, which parallels the reported decrease of the magnetization for epitaxial Fe films on GaAs.