Structural and Magnetic Properties of Ce/Fe and Ce/FeCoV Multilayers.

Ce/Fe and Ce/FeCoV multilayers have been grown by magnetron sputtering on Si substrates with layer thicknesses in the range 10-40 A. The influence of the sputtering conditions and design of the multilayers on the crystallinity of the layers and on the quality of the interfaces has been studied by X-ray diffraction and reflection. The interfaces are well defined and the layers are crystalline down to an individual layer thickness of 20 A. Ce/FeCoV multilayers show sharper interfaces than Ce/Fe ones but some loss of crystallinity is observed. Hysteresis loops obtained by SQUID show different behaviour of the bulk magnetisation as a function of the layer thickness. Fe moments are found by Mossbauer spectroscopy to be perpendicular to the interfaces for small periodicity multilayers.JRC.E-Institute for Transuranium Elements (Karlsruhe