Chromium selenide thin films were grown epitaxially on Al2O3(0001) and Si(111)-(7×7) substrates using molecular beam epitaxy (MBE). Sharp streaks in reflection high-energy electron diffraction and triangular structures in scanning tunneling microscopy indicate a flat smooth film growth along the c-axis, and is very similar to that from a hexagonal surface. X-ray diffraction pattern confirms the growth along the c-axis with c-axis lattice constant of 17.39 {\AA}. The grown film is semiconducting, having a small band gap of about 0.034 eV, as calculated from the temperature dependent resistivity. Antiferromagnetic nature of the film with a N\'eel temperature of about 40 K is estimated from the magnetic exchange bias measurements. A larger out-of-plane exchange bias, along with a smaller in-plane exchange bias is observed below 40 K. Exchange bias training effects are analyzed based on different models and are observed to be following a modified power-law decay behavior.
@article{arxiv.2003.01199,
title = {Structural and Magnetic Properties of Molecular Beam Epitaxy Grown Chromium Selenide Thin Films},
author = {Anupam Roy and Rik Dey and Tanmoy Pramanik and Amritesh Rai and Ryan Schalip and Sarmita Majumder and Samaresh Guchhait and Sanjay K Banerjee},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2003.01199},
year = {2020}
}