In-situ studies of structure and magnetic properties of Co Clusters on Au(111)

Abstract

We investigated the surface structure and the local magnetic moment of Co clusters grown on a reconstructed surface of Au(111). We performed an in-situ experiment with scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) and soft X-ray magnetic circular dichroism (XMCD) spectroscopy, to reveal the spin and orbital magnetic moments on the Co atomic site in the well-characterized cluster structure without overlayers. While the spin magnetic moment is comparable to bulk Co, the orbital magnetic moment is considerably enhanced in the clusters whose lateral size is 8.4 nm.© 2014 Landes Bioscience.