%0 Journal Article
%A T Sands
%A J.P Harbison
%A M.L Leadbeater
%A S.J Allen Jr
%A G.W Hull
%A Ramamoorthy Ramesh
%A V.G Keramidas
%B Applied Physics Letters
%D 1990
%G eng
%P 2609-2611
%R 10.1063/1.103826
%T Epitaxial ferromagnetic τ-MnAl films on GaAs
%V 57
%X We report the growth of epitaxial τ-MnAl ferromagnetic films on GaAs substrates by molecular beam epitaxy (MBE). Reflection high-energy electron diffraction and x-ray diffraction show that the τ-phase films grow with the c axis of the tetragonal unit cell normal to the 100GaAs substrate surface. In the bulk, τ-MnAl is a metastable ferromagnetic phase with uniaxial magnetocrystalline anisotropy. The large hysteresis observed in the Hall resistance versus applied magnetic field suggests that the easy magnetization direction is indeed parallel to the c axis in the MBE-grown films. The growth of these ferromagnetic films with perpendicular magnetization on compound semiconductor substrates creates the possibility of novel devices that combine magnetic memory and magneto-optic functions with semiconductor electronics and photonics.