Abstract

With the constant progress made in designing and manufacturing materials with composition modulation in one dimension on an atomic scale [1], artificial superlattices have opened up new opportunities to study both theoretically and experimentally a wide range of properties. This new class of materials consist of a sandwich of layers of different species or mixtures thereof, and with the development of atom by atom deposition techniques, composition, layer repeat period, growth orientation and chemical order may be controlled. Such atomic engineering has led to the discovery of new phenomena such as the supermodulus effect [2], giant magneto-resistance effect [3] and also complex phenomena at or near interfaces such as solid state amorphization [4]. Moreover, unusual properties are expected in one dimensional quasiperiodic multilayers [5].

© 1992 Optical Society of America