The properties of artificial layered structures are in many cases revolutionary, revealing many phenomena that are not found previously in bulk materials. We present the study of magnetic properties of MBE grown epitaxial vanadium (V) / gadolinium (Gd) bilayers. The samples were grown in UHV conditions using standard MBE system. Configuration of the samples is the following: substrate Al2O3[11-20]/Mo 200 A buffer layer/V layer with thickness 4, 6, 8 or 10 monolayers (ML)/Gd layer 65 A. All samples were oxydation protected with Al cover layer. Quality of the subsequent layers and interfaces were investigated by RHEED during evaporation. To characterise structural properties and determine a detailed structure of the samples the X-ray reflectivity measurements were performed using synchrotron radiation. The magnetic properties of ultra thin gadolinium / vanadium bilayers were studied as a function of vanadium layer thickness (from 4 to 10 ML). To determine magnetic properties of the samples two methods were applied: VSM measurements for the hysteresis loops determination and Polarised Neutron Reflectivity (PNR) experiment was performed in order to evaluate separately the magnetic moments of V and Gd. The simulations of neutron reflectivity curves treated with Parratt algorithm clearly show a strong magnetic moment induced in V layers, which decreases with V layer thickness. We found approximately half of its bulk magnetic moment value for Gd atoms, this fact we connect to the roughness of Gd layers and its reduced dimensionality.

Acknowledgments: This work was partly supported by EU RTD project SPINOSA, contract no. IST-2001-33334.

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