articlePhysical Review BAug 1, 2011LVBRONZE OA

First-principles investigation of the very large perpendicular magnetic anisotropy at Fe | MgO and Co | MgO interfaces

CEA Grenoble · Université Grenoble Alpes · +8 more institutions

Indexed inarxivcrossref

Abstract

The perpendicular magnetic anisotropy (PMA) arising at the interface between ferromagnetic transition metals and metallic oxides was investigated via first-principles calculations. In this work very large values of PMA, up to 3 erg/cm${}^{2}$, at Fe$|$MgO interfaces are reported, in agreement with recent experiments. The origin of PMA is attributed to overlap between O-${p}_{z}$ and transition metal ${d}_{{z}^{2}}$ orbitals hybridized with ${d}_{xz(yz)}$ orbitals with stronger spin-orbit coupling-induced splitting around the Fermi level for perpendicular magnetization orientation. Furthermore, it is shown that the PMA value weakens in the case of over- or underoxidation due to the fact that oxygen ${p}_{z}$…

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6

Topics & keywords

Keywords
  • Condensed matter physics
  • Atomic orbital
  • Orientation (vector space)
  • Anisotropy
  • Transition metal
  • Ferromagnetism
  • Coupling (piping)
  • Magnetization
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