Body-Centered-Cubic Ni and Its Magnetic Properties

by C. S. Tian et al. Physical Review Letters, 8 Apr 2005 The body-centered-cubic (bcc) phase of Ni, which does not exist in nature, has been achieved as a thin film on GaAs(001) at 170 K via molecular beam epitaxy. The bcc Ni is ferromagnetic with a Curie temperature of 456 K and possesses a magnetic moment of 0.52±0.08µB/atom. The cubic magnetocrystalline anisotropy of bcc Ni is determined to be +4.0×105 ergs·cm-3, as opposed to -5.7×104 ergs·cm-3 for the naturally occurring face-centered-cubic (fcc) Ni. This sharp contrast in the magnetic anisotropy is attributed to the different electronic band structures between bcc Ni and fcc Ni, which are determined using angle-resolved photoemission with synchrotron radiation. Read the article