X-ray diffraction study of Mn/Sb multilayered films with artificial superstructures

Abstract
Structures of Mn/Sb multilayered films have been investigated by X-ray diffraction. MnSb/Sb superlattice films are obtained when the nominal thicknesses are (Mn(1 AA)/Sb(50 AA))90 and (Mn(2 AA)/Sb(50 AA))90. Ultrathin layers of MnSb are formed by interfacial reaction in these samples with keeping an epitaxial orientation of (00.1)MnSb//(00.1)Sb; (11.0)MnSb//(11.0)Sb. These films have fibre texture structures with an in-plane coherence length of about 300 AA. The distribution of growth orientation is approximated by a Gaussian distribution function with a half-width of about 10 degrees . The analyses of diffraction intensities indicate that (i) the texture structure causes a monotonic reduction of peak intensity with increase of scattering vector including fundamental reflection and (ii) that layer thickness fluctuations in the range of one or two monolayers cause peak broadening and intensity reduction only for the higher-order satellite reflections. Observed satellite intensities could be reproduced by a model calculation which takes into consideration these two effects.