Preparation of freestanding Fe4N crystal by vapor-phase epitaxy under atmospheric pressure

In this work, a freestanding Fe4N crystal was grown by atmospheric pressure halide vapor-phase epitaxy (AP-HVPE) using FeCl3 and NH3 as starting materials. A crystal with 100 μm thickness on a MgO (1 0 0) substrate was obtained. Subsequently, the substrate of MgO (1 0 0) was removed. The full width at half maximum of the X-ray (2 0 0) diffraction peak for the Fe4N crystal was about 80 s. Crystalline quality of Fe4N is supported by X-ray pole-figure. The saturation magnetization and coercive force of the crystal grown at 873 K were 184 emu g−1 and 20 Oe, respectively. It is found that the AP-HVPE is an excellent method for preparing freestanding Fe4N crystal with high quality.