Giant magnetoresistance and interface structure of Cu/Co multilayers grown by MBE on Si(111) substrates with copper-silicide buffers

Grazing incidence specular and diffuse synchrotron X-ray scattering has been used to study the interface structure of Cu/Co multilayers grown by MBE on Si (111) substrates with a thin copper silicide buffer layer. For similar values of GMR, the roughness is found to be significantly greater than that of Co/Cu multilayers grown on sapphire with a Nh buffer. The roughness has a very long in-plane correlation length and the off-set in the peaks of diffuse and specular scatter is interpreted as arising from terracing of the multilayers.