Anatomy of perpendicular magnetic anisotropy in Fe/MgO magnetic tunnel junctions: First principles insight

A. Hallal; H. X. Yang; B. Dieny; M. Chshiev

doi:10.1103/PhysRevB.88.184423

paper

Anatomy of perpendicular magnetic anisotropy in Fe/MgO magnetic tunnel junctions: First principles insight

arXiv:1308.2909 · doi:10.1103/PhysRevB.88.184423

Abstract

Using first-principles calculations, we elucidate microscopic mechanisms of perpendicular magnetic anisotropy (PMA)in Fe/MgO magnetic tunnel junctions through evaluation of orbital and layer resolved contributions into the total anisotropy value. It is demonstrated that the origin of the large PMA values is far beyond simply considering the hybridization between Fe-3d $an d O - 2 p or bi t a l s a tt h e in t er f a ce b e tw ee n t h e m e t a l an d t h e in s u l a t or . O n - s i t e p r o j ec t e d ana l y s i ss h o w t ha tt h e ani so t r o p y e n er g y i s n o tl oc a l i z e d a tt h e in t er f a ce b u t i t r a t h er p r o p a g a t es in t o t h e b u l k s h o w in g ana tt e n u a t in g osc i l l a t or y b e ha v i or w hi c h d e p e n d so n or bi t a l c ha r a c t er o f co n t r ib u t in g s t a t es an d in t er f a c ia l co n d i t i o n s . F u r t h er m or e, i t i s f o u n d inm os t s i t u a t i o n s t ha t s t a t es w i t h$ d_{yz(xz)} $an d$ d_{z^2} $c ha r a c t er t e n d a l w a y s t o main t ain t h e P M A w hi l e t h ose w i t h$ d_{xy} $an d$ d_{x^2-y^2} $c ha r a c t er t e n d t o f a v or t h e in - pl an e ani so t r o p y . I t i s a l so f o u n d t ha tw hi l e M g O t hi c k n ess ha s n o in f l u e n ceo n P M A, t h ec a l c u l a t e d p er p e n d i c u l a r ma g n e t i c ani so t r o p y osc i l l a t es a s a f u n c t i o n o f F e t hi c k n ess w i t ha p er i o d o f 2 M L an d r e a c h es ama x im u m v a l u eo f 3.6 m J / m$ ^2$.

5 pages, 5 figures

References in corpus (1)

X-Ray Analysis of Oxygen-induced Perpendicular Magnetic Anisotropy in Pt/Co/AlOx trilayer

Anatomy of perpendicular magnetic anisotropy in Fe/MgO magnetic tunnel junctions: First principles insight

Abstract

References in corpus (1)

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