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Intern: Intern: Edward Letts, Physics, UCSB Mentor: Yewhee Chye Faculty Supervisor: Pierre Petroff Department: Materials

Characterization of iron thin films on GaAs for spin injector .

Thin Fe films and clusters can be grown on a GaAs substrate using molecular beam epitaxy (MBE). One of the possible devices that can be created from this combination of ferromagnetic material on a semiconductor is a spin injector, which might have important technological applications. So far there has been little success in building efficient spin injectors. A GaMnAs spin injector has been made, but it only operates at low temperatures, 4K. In order to build a spin injector we must first characterize the effects of the growth conditions of the Fe using an atomic force microscope (AFM), photoluminescence (PL), SQUID, and X-ray diffraction with the goal of making high quality Fe crystal lattices. I performed the measurements using the AFM and PL, while Yewhee performed SQUID and X-ray measurements. The primary properties that were studied with AFM and PL were the effects of Fe growth temperature and Fe film thickness on the topography of the sample and the electronic properties of a quantum well using AFM.

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