Effect of low-temperature post-growth annealing on anisotropic strain in epitaxial Fe layers deposited on GaAs(001)

We study the effect of low-temperature post growth annealing on the Fe layer in an epitaxial Fe/GaAs(001) heterojunction. High resolution X-ray diffraction and X-ray reflectivity were used to probe the Fe layer before and after annealing. No change in morphological features like annealing induced intermixing and thickness variation of the Fe layer are observed. However, annealing leads to increase in the compressive strain and improves isotropy of the ferromagnetic layer as revealed by measuring both lateral and out-of-plane lattice components.