High quality Fe3-deltaO4/InAs hybrid structure for electrical spin injection

Single Crystalline Fe3-deltaO4 (0<=delta<=0.33) films have been epitaxially grown on InAs (001) substrates by molecular beam epitaxy using O2 as source of active oxygen. Under optimum growth conditions in-situ real time reflection high-energy electron diffraction patterns along with ex-situ atomic force microscopy indicated the (001) Fe3-deltaO4 to be grown under step-flow-growth mode with a characteristic surface reconstruction. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy demonstrate the possibility to obtain iron oxides with compositions ranging from Fe3O4 to gamma-Fe2O3. Superconducting quantum interference device magnetometer at 300K shows well behaved magnetic properties giving therefore credibility to the promise of iron based oxides for spintronic applications.