Strain engineering of magnetic proximity effect in Rh and its role in interfacial spin transport

This project addresses interfacial effects of spin-to-charge conversion in ferromagnet/heavy metal bilayers and aims at their optimization using various spin sink materials and designing an inteface via strain and alloying. In the previous set of samples probed by FMR, XMCD and TEM we have shown the absence of magnetic polarization of Rh in epitaxial Fe/Rh bilayers grown on GaAs(001) which are characterized by excellent epitaxial quality and minimized strain via regular disclocations plane at the atomically flat interface. In this follow-up proposal we aim to reveal the role of induced magnetic polarization of strained Rh layer in interfacial spin transport (damping enhancement due to spin pumping, interfacial transparency) in Fe/Rh bilayers grown on GaAs(110) substrate which is known to promote Volmer-Weber growth of Fe (nucleation of 3D islands due to large interface energy and the following quasi-layer-by-layer growth) with increased surface roughness.