Time effects in the thermal annealing of Fe/V multilayers

We report a study on the structural and magnetic properties of iron-vanadium thin films grown in multilayer form and mixed by thermal treatment. The multilayer samples were annealed at 610 deg. C for times ranging from 10 to 540 min. The samples were structurally characterized by means of x-ray diffraction (XRD) and by x-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS). The magnetic characterization was carried out with a conventional alternating gradient magnetometer (AGM) and by conversion electron Moessbauer spectroscopy (CEMS). The XRD result for the as-deposited multilayer shows a high degree of crystallinity while the CEMS result suggests an abrupt interface, since no significant contribution from vanadium in iron is observed. After the thermal treatment, the results from XRD show a phase transformation of the disordered body-centred-cubic structure (α-phase) into a tetragonal structure (σ-phase) and a subsequent return to the α-phase. This α-σ-α oscillation is not reported in the literature available to the authors