Interest in magnetic nanostructures has increased rapidly because of their potential applications in a number of magnetic nanotechnologies such as high-density magnetic recording media, magnetic field sensors, magnetic nanoprobes for spin-polarized microscopy and cell manipulation in biomedical technology. Successful incorporation of ferromagnetic nanostructures in semiconductors may open a new area in spintronic applications. In this study, two kinds of Fe-based nanostructures were grown by the molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) technique, namely, Fe quantum dots (QDs) and Fe nanowires (NWs).

For Fe QDs, a multilayer magnetic QD sample containing 5 layers of Fe QDs embedded in 6 layers of ZnS spacer was grown on a GaP(100) substrate. High resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM) observations reveal that the Fe QDs are single crystalline with spherical shape of diameters around 3 to 4 nm and area density of 1.5 × 10¹² cm^-2 . Its zero-field cooled (ZFC) and field cooled (FC) curves measured at low field (100 Oe) show the magnetic relaxation effect with a blocking temperature around 26 K. The hysteresis loop measured at 5 K shows a coercivity of 83 Oe, confirming the slow relaxation process and coercivity enhancement attributed to the nanoparticle nature of the sample.

To study the transport property of Fe QDs, a Au/ZnS/Fe-QDs/ZnS/n+-GaAs Schottky-barrier structure containing 5 layers of Fe QDs was fabricated on a n+-GaAs(100) substrate. Its current-voltage (I-V) characteristics measured from 5 to 295 K display negative differential resistance (NDR) for temperature ≤ 50 K, which is caused by the presence of Fe QDs. The highest peak-to-valley current ratio obtained at 5 K is as high as 15:1. Staircase-like I-V characteristic was also observed at low temperature in some devices fabricated from this structure. Possible mechanisms that can account for the observed unusual I-V characteristics in this structure were discussed.

Two types of self-assembled Fe NWs were grown on ZnS/GaP(100) surface under high growth/annealing temperature. The Type-A Fe NWs orient along the ZnS[110] direction with irregular shape, while the type-B Fe NWs orient along either the ZnS[180] or [810] direction with seemingly straight shape. Detailed HRTEM and selected area diffraction (SAD) studies reveal that both types were single-crystalline with their elongated axis along the Fe<100> direction family possibly due to the fact that the easy axis of Fe is along this direction. We have proposed a mean-field model to explain the slight misalignment of the type-B Fe NWs. The I-V characteristic of a single type-B Fe NW measured at room temperature displays a straight line nature corresponding to a resistivity about 2.3 × 10^-7Ωm.