Magnetic anisotropy of crystalline Fe films grown on (001) GaAs substrates using Ge buffer layers

Magnetic anisotropy of Fe films grown on (001) GaAs substrates using Ge buffer layers were investigated by planar Hall effect measurements. In addition to phenomena arising from dominant cubic symmetry of the Fe specimen, the study of angular dependence of magnetization reversal revealed breaking of this symmetry in the form of systematic asymmetric shifts of magnetic hysteresis loops around the <110 > crystallographic directions. We ascribe such symmetry breaking to an admixture of uniaxial anisotropy associated with the [100] direction in the Fe film. To determine the parameters associated with this uniaxial anisotropy, we quantitatively analyze the asymmetric shifts of the hysteresis loop centers from the <110 > directions. Even though the value of these parameters turns out to be relatively small compared to that of the cubic anisotropy (by about two orders of magnitude), they survive up to room temperature.