Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 February 2011
We have prepared epitaxial Fe(110)/Mo(110) multilayers by sputter deposition. These films exhibit a large uniaxial anisotropy and may be attractive as islanded in-plane recording media. The large uniaxial anisotropy is due to the intrinsic surface anisotropy of the Fe(110)/Mo(110) interface, which is of the same magnitude as the surface anistropy of the Fe(110)/W(110) interface but has a different sign (the surface anisotropy of the Fe(110)/Mo(110) interface prefers the [001] axis of magnetization). The magnetoelastic component of the anisotropy is not large. A novel magneto-optic technique was used to measure the transverse component of the magnetization and deduce information about the anisotropy and domain structure of the multilayers.