Reduction of magnetic moments in very thin Cr layers of Fe/Cr multilayers: Evidence from Sn-119 Mossbauer spectroscopy

Abstract

Fe/Cr multilayers with monatomic Sn layers embedded in the Cr layers were grown epitaxially on MgO(001) substrates, and the magnetic hyperfine field at the [119]Sn nuclear sites was examined using Mössbauer spectroscopy. It was found that nonzero hyperfine field is induced at the Sn sites at room temperature and that the value reduces drastically from 10 to 2 T when the Cr layer thickness decreases from 80 to 10 Å. The result indicates that the Cr layers are magnetically ordered even when the thickness is very small and that the magnetic moments of Cr become smaller as the Cr layer thickness decreases.