Their exceptional chemical and magnetic properties together with their biocompatibility and wide availability make Fe$_\text{x}$O$_\text{y}$ nanostructures and nanoparticles a common basis for catalysts, magneto-electric elements, nanoscale building blocks in material science and tracers for magnetic particle imaging [1,2,3,4]. For Fe$_\text{x}$O$_\text{y}$ nanoparticles in medical applications, a precise tuning of the magnetic properties by controlling composition and defect structure is crucial. The usually less ordered arrangement of wet-chemically synthesised nanoparticles, however, impedes disentangling the influences of preparation and size effects on the magnetic properties using scattering methods [5,6]. This could be overcome using ordered epitaxial Fe$_\text{x}$O$_\text{y}$ nanoislands deposited on an inert substrate as a model system.
The preparation and characterisation of Fe$_\text{x}$O$_\text{y}$ nanoislands by reflection high en-ergy electron diffraction, grazing incidence small angle X-ray scattering (GISAXS) and grazing incidence X-ray diffraction is presented, suggesting the formation of crystalline nanoislands with a well-defined shape. These samples are the basis for ongoing in situ studies probing their magnetic structure and its relations with composition, shape, and defect structure by scattering methods such as polarised neutron reflectivity (PNR) and nuclear forward scattering of synchrotron radiation in grazing incidence geometry.
[1] C. Ratnasamy et al., Catal. Rev. 51, 325 (2009); [2] R. Arras et al., Appl. Phys. Lett. 100, 3 (2012); [3] A. Dreyer et al., Nature Mat. 15, 5 (2016), [4] B. Gleich et al., Nature 435, 1214, (2005); [5] T. Köhler et al., Nanoscale 13, (2021); [6] D. Zákutná et al., PRX 10, 031019 (2020)
Steffen TOBER
(Jülich Centre for Neutron Science JCNS, Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, D-52425 Jülich, Germany)
Asmaa Qdemat
(Jülich Centre for Neutron Science JCNS, Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, D-52425 Jülich, Germany)
Mohammad Tehrani
(Centre for X-ray and Nanoscience, Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron DESY, D-22607 Hamburg, Germany and Physics Department, University of Hamburg, D-20355 Hamburg, Germany)
Yifan Xu
(Jülich Centre for Neutron Science JCNS, Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, D-52425 Jülich, Germany)
Jan-Christian Schober
(Centre for X-ray and Nanoscience, Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron DESY, D-22607 Hamburg, Germany and Physics Department, University of Hamburg, D-20355 Hamburg, Germany)
Erik Beck
(Centre for X-ray and Nanoscience, Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron DESY, D-22607 Hamburg, Germany and Physics Department, University of Hamburg, D-20355 Hamburg, Germany)
Marcus Creutzburg
(Centre for X-ray and Nanoscience, Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron DESY, D-22607 Hamburg, Germany)
Vedran Vonk
(Centre for X-ray and Nanoscience, Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron DESY, D-22607 Hamburg, Germany)
Anton Devishvili
(Institut Laue-Langevin, Grenoble, France)
Alexei Vorobiev
(Department of Physics and Astronomy, Uppsala University, Box 516, 751 20 Uppsala, Sweden and Institut Laue-Langevin, Grenoble, France)
Kai Schlage
(DESY Photon Science, Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron DESY, D-22607 Hamburg, Germany)
Sven Velten
(DESY Photon Science, Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron DESY, D-22607 Hamburg, Germany)
Ilya Sergeev
(DESY Photon Science, Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron DESY, D-22607 Hamburg, Germany)
Nadine Seidel
(Jülich Centre for Neutron Science JCNS, Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, D-52425 Jülich, Germany)
Mai Hussein Hamed
(Jülich Centre for Neutron Science JCNS, Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, D-52425 Jülich, Germany)
Ulrich Rücker
(Jülich Centre for Neutron Science JCNS, Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, D-52425 Jülich, Germany)
Artem Feoktystov
(Jülich Centre for Neutron Science JCNS at Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Zentrum MLZ, Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, D-85748 Garching, Germany)
Emmanuel Kentzinger
(Jülich Centre for Neutron Science JCNS, Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, D-52425 Jülich, Germany)
Andreas Stierle
(Centre for X-ray and Nanoscience, Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron DESY, D-22607 Hamburg, Germany and Physics Department, University of Hamburg, D-20355 Hamburg, Germany)
Connie Bednarski-Meinke
(Jülich Centre for Neutron Science JCNS, Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, D-52425 Jülich, Germany)
