Ion beam mixing and interdiffusion in magnetite thin films

Rutherford Backscattering Spectrometry was applied to investigate the stability of magnetite thin films including an ion beam bombardment. A series of single layer Fe
3
O
4
/MgO(001) and bi-layer Fe
3
O
4
/Fe/MgO(001) thin films with different layer thickness was prepared by the Molecular Beam Epitaxy (MBE) technique. To modify the film interfaces 1 MeV Kr
⁺
ion beam with different ion fluences was used. We observed a pronounced Fe-Mg intermixing effect of the ion irradiation. The stoichiometric magnetite layer is well preserved even upon ion irradiation with small doses, which indicates a high stability of the Fe
3
O
4
layer under different external conditions.