Uniaxial in-plane magnetization of iron nanolayers grown within an amorphous matrix

Conversion electron M€ossbauer spectroscopy is used to determine the magnetic ground state at zero magnetic field of four-monolayer thick amorphous iron layers as part of a CoFeB-Fe multilayer stack. By comparing the intensities of the magnetic hyperfine field, an easy in-plane axis of the amorphous embedded Fe layer is verified, which is collinear to the uniaxial anisotropy axis of the neighboring amorphous CoFeB. Despite the soft magnetic character of the Fe layers, external fields up to 4 T perpendicular to the film plane are insufficient to completely align the embedded Fe moments parallel to the magnetic field due to a local disorder of the magnetic moments of the Fe atoms.