Magnetocrystalline anisotropy energy for adatoms and monolayers on non-magnetic substrates: where does it comes from?

Abstract

The substrate contribution to the magnetic anisotropy energy (MAE) of supported nanostructures can be quantified by a site-selective manipulation of the spin-orbit coupling (SOC) and the effective exchange field B_ex. A systematic study of Co adatoms and Co monolayers on the (111) surfaces of Cu, Ag, Au, Pd and Pt is performed to study common trends in this class of materials. It is found that for adatoms, the substrate contribution is relatively small (10-30% of the MAE) while for monolayers, the substrate contribution can be substantial. The contribution from the SOC is much more important than the contribution from the exchange field B_ex, except for highly polarizable substrates with a strong SOC (such as Pt). The substrate always promotes the tendency to an out-of-plane orientation of the easy magnetic axis for all the investigated systems.

9 pages, 2 figures, 13 tables

References in corpus (6)

• Surface Magnetoelectric Effect in Ferromagnetic Metal Films
• First-principles calculation of the Gilbert damping parameter via the linear response formalism with application to magnetic transition-metals and alloys
• Magnetic Anisotropy and Magnetization Dynamics of Individual Atoms and Clusters of Fe and Co on Pt(111)
• Trends in the magnetic properties of Fe, Co and Ni clusters and monolayers on Ir(111), Pt(111) and Au(111)
• Magnetic properties of single atoms of Fe and Co on Ir(111) and Pt(111)
• Co monolayers and adatoms on Pd(100), Pd(111) and Pd(110): Anisotropy of magnetic properties

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Magnetocrystalline anisotropy of FePt: a detailed view
• Intersublattice magnetocrystalline anisotropy using a realistic tight-binding method based on maximally localized Wannier functions
• Spatial decomposition of magnetic anisotropy in magnets: application for doped Fe16N2
• Illustrative view on the magnetocrystalline anisotropy of adatoms and monolayers
• Influence of spin-orbit coupling on the magnetic dipole term $T_{\alpha }$
• Assessing different approaches to ab initio calculations of spin wave stiffness