Spin-Polarized Low Energy Electron Microscopy

Takanori Koshikawa, Masahiko Suzuki, Tsuneo Yasue, Ernst Bauer, Tsutomu Nakanishi, Xiunuang Jin and Yoshikazu Takeda

Abstract: Low energy electron microscopy (LEEM) and photo-emission electron microscopy (PEEM) have been widely paid attention to because of their dynamic and versatile observation. However the magnetic contrast cannot be easily obtained with the dynamic mode so far due to the low brightness and spin-polarization of the electron gun.  We describe the detailed development results on high brightness, highly spin-polarized and long life time electron gun with novel ideas which are the back-side illumination of the laser beam, the strained super lattice for the photocathode and XHV including novel design of the electron optics. After the development, we achieved dynamic observation of the magnetic domain contrast (20ms/frame) and the detailed experimental results of [CoNi₂]_y multi-layers on W(110) have been obtained, which could be important for spintronics materials.

Key words: spin-polarized low energy electron microscopy, Dynamic observation, spintronics, magnetic domain observation, strained super-lattice