Effects of Room Temperature Heavy-Ion Irradiation on Magnetic and Electrical Properties of a Single Crystalline Iron Thin Film

Abstract

We investigated the magnetic and electrical properties of a heavy-ion irradiated single crystalline iron film. A high quality Fe (001) film on MgO (001) was fabricated using the molecular beam epitaxy technique. The iron film was treated by 3.2 MeV Ni ion irradiation at room temperature using a tandem accelerator. Although the residual electrical resistivity increased by 0.9×10⁻⁸ Ωm after ion irradiation, the M-H curves did not change significantly. These results indicate that the formation of small irradiation defects such as sub-nanometer size vacancy clusters has little influence on magnetocrystalline anisotropy and the magnetization process of iron.