Enantiosensitive growth dynamics of chiral molecules on ferromagnetic substrates and the origin of the CISS effect.

The recent demonstration of the existence of an intimate relationship between the chiral structure of some materials and the spin polarization of electrons transmitted through them, what has been called the chirality-induced spin selectivity (CISS) effect, is sparking interest in many related phenomena. One of the most notorious is the possibility of using magnetic materials to apply enantioselective interactions on chiral molecules and chemical reactions involving them. In this work, x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy has been used to characterize the adsorption and growth kinetics of enantiopure organic molecules on magnetic (Co) and non-magnetic (Cu) substrates. While on these latter, no significant enantiosensitive effects are found, on spin-polarized, in-plane magnetized Co surfaces, the two enantiomers have been found to deposit differently. The observed effects have been interpreted as the result of one of the enantiomers being adsorbed in a transient, weakly bound physisorbed-like state with higher mobility due to limited, spin-selective charge transfer between it and the substrate. The study of these phenomena can provide insight into the fundamental mechanisms responsible for the CISS effect.

Recent patents on self-organised magnetic nanodot arrays.

As the continuous advance in the process of device miniaturisation reaches down to the nanometre range, fabrication techniques based on self-organisation, i.e., the spontaneous formation of ordered patterns on surfaces, are becoming increasingly attractive as potential, highly efficient alternatives to lithographic methods. In this article we review some of the methodologies that have been developed recently to produce ordered arrays of nanomagnets using self-organised surface templates, and we list the patents that have been filed recently to protect those fabrication procedures. We describe the underlying phenomena giving rise to the appearance of the ordered structures, and discuss their characteristics and the controllable parameters.

Ion beam sputtered nanostructured semiconductor surfaces as templates for nanomagnet arrays.

The ongoing tendency for increasing the storage densities in magnetic recording techniques requires a search for efficient routes to fabricate and characterize nanomagnet arrays on solid supports. Spontaneous pattern formation in semiconductor heteroepitaxy or under ion erosion of semiconductor surfaces yields nanostructured substrates that can serve as templates for subsequent deposition of magnetic material. The nanostructured morphology of the template can easily be replicated into the magnetic coating by means of the shadow deposition technique which allows one to selectively cover specific areas of the template with magnetic material. Here, we demonstrate that ion bombardment induced hexagonally arranged GaSb dots are suitable templates for fabricating by shadow deposition close-packed nanomagnets with a lateral extension of ≤50 nm, i.e. with a resulting storage density of up to 0.2 Tbit in(-2). Magnetic-force microscopy (MFM) measurements revealed that the individual nanomagnets-which are located on the tops of the semiconductor hillocks-are single domain and show mainly independent magnetization. The coupling behaviour was estimated from correlation function analysis of the MFM data. In addition, magneto-optical Kerr effect measurements demonstrate that the nanomagnets can be magnetized either out-of-plane or in-plane and show remanence at room temperature, with a coercive field of 120 mT.

Surfactant-assisted epitaxial growth and magnetism of Fe films on Cu(111).

The magnetic properties of thin epitaxial layers of Fe grown on Cu(111) depend sensitively on the films' structure and morphology. A combination of experiments and numerical simulations reveals that the use of a surfactant monolayer (ML) of Pb during molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) growth at room temperature reduces the amount of interdiffusion at the Cu-Fe interface, retards the fcc-to-bcc transformation by about 2 ML and substantially increases the films' coercivity. The origin of all these alterations to the magnetic behavior can be traced back to the structural modifications provoked by the surfactant during the early growth stages. These results open the way for the controlled fabrication of custom-designed materials with specific magnetic characteristics.

Nonstochastic behavior of atomic surface diffusion on Cu(111) down to low temperatures.

Atomic diffusion is usually understood as a succession of random, independent displacements of an adatom over the surface's potential energy landscape. Nevertheless, an analysis of molecular dynamics simulations of self-diffusion on Cu(111) demonstrates the existence of different types of correlations in the atomic jumps at all temperatures. Thus, the atomic displacements cannot be correctly described in terms of a random walk model. This fact has a profound impact on the determination and interpretation of diffusion coefficients and activation barriers.