Local probe of irradiation-induced structural changes and orbital magnetism in Fe60Al40 thin films via an order-disorder phase transition

• Hard x-ray absorption and magnetic circular dichroism spectroscopy have been applied to study the consequential changes of the local environment around Fe atoms and their orbital polarizations in 40 nm thick Fe60Al40 thin films along the order-disorder (B2 -> A2) phase transition initiated by 20-keV Ne+ ion irradiation with fluences of (0.75-6) x 10(14) ions cm(-2). The analysis of the extended x-ray absorption fine structure spectra measured at the Fe K edge at room temperature revealed an increased number of Fe-Fe nearest neighbors from 3.47(7) to 5.0(1) and similar to 1% of volume expansion through the transition. The visualization of the Fe and Al nearest-neighbor rearrangement in the first coordination shell of Fe absorbers via the transition was carried out by wavelet transformations. The obtained changes in Fe coordination are evidently reflected in the x-ray magnetic circular dichroism spectra which show an increased orbital magnetic moment of Fe atoms and a pronounced magnetic multielectronic excitations peak at similar to 60 eV above the edge. The amplitudes of both peaks demonstrated similar dependencies on the irradiation fluence. The results of self-consistent density functional calculations on relaxed Fe60Al40 model structures for the ordered (B2) and the disordered (A2) phases are consistent with the experimental findings and point to the formation of Fe-rich regions in the films studied.

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NATURVETENSKAP  -- Fysik -- Den kondenserade materiens fysik (hsv//swe)

NATURAL SCIENCES  -- Physical Sciences -- Condensed Matter Physics (hsv//eng)

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