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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 February 2011
We have used grazing incidence x-ray diffraction to observe the structural evolution during growth of sputter-deposited epitaxial Fe films on Cu(001) and Pt(001). We find that on Cu(001), Fe is fcc up to a thickness of 10–12 monolayers, whereupon bcc Fe is observed in first the Pitsch and then the Bain orientations. The fcc Fe shows some relaxation of the misfit from the Cu, as do the Pitsch orientation bcc, which is in tension, and the Bain orientation bcc, which is in compression. All three Fe variants exist in a 40 monolayer thick film. On Pt(001) the Fe grows as bcc with the Bain orientation. However, a thin (20 å) bcc Fe film is transformed to fcc Fe with cube-on-cube orientation by subsequent deposition of Pt. This behavior is consistent with intermixing of Pt into the Fe layer, which lowers the mismatch and bulk chemical energies of the fcc phase relative to that of the bcc phase.