Growth of Magnetic Materials/Development of Magnetism in Materials.







Students:  W. G. Cullen and L. E. Harrell.





The ultimate aim of this project is to use a scanning tunneling

microscope (STM) to follow the development of magnetic properties in

materials, from clusters consisting of only a few atoms, up to the

limit of continuous thin films.  Presently, islands of magnetic

material are created through self-organization during the vapor

deposition process, since many of the cluster sizes of interest here are

not yet achievable with lithographic techniques.  Recent experiments

have addressed the role of intermixing for Ni clusters deposited on

GaAs surfaces and on Au surfaces.  A low-temperature ultrahigh vacuum

STM (recently completed) is to be used to study the thermodynamics of

the magnetization in these small clusters.