Unoccupied surface and interface states in Pd thin films deposited on Fe/Ir(111) surface

Abstract

We present a systematic first-principles study of the electronic surface states and resonances occuring in thin films of Pd of various thicknesses deposited on a single ferromagnetic monolayer of Fe on top of Ir(111) substrate. This system is of interest since one Pd layer deposited on Fe/Ir(111) hosts small magnetic skyrmions. The latter are topological magnetic objects with swirling spin-textures with possible implications in the context of spintronic devices since they have the potential to be used as magnetic bits for information technology. The stabilization, detection and manipulation of such non-collinear magnetic entities require a quantitative investigation and a fundamental understanding of their electronic structure. Here we investigate the nature of the unoccupied electronic states in Pd/Fe/Ir(111), which are essential in the large spin-mixing magnetoresistance (XMR) signature captured using non spin-polarized scanning tunnelling microscopy [Crum et al., Nat. Commun. {\bf 6} 8541 (2015); Hanneken et al., Nat. Nanotech. {\bf 10}, 1039 (2015)]. To provide a complete analysis, we investigate bare Fe/Ir(111) and Pd${}_{n=2,7}$/Fe/Ir(111) surfaces. Our results demonstrate the emergence of surface and interface states after deposition of Pd monolayers, which are strongly impacted by the large spin-orbit coupling of Ir surface.

arXiv comment16 pages, 11 figures

References in corpus (11)

• Field-Dependent Size and Shape of Single Magnetic Skyrmions
• Electrical detection of magnetic skyrmions by non-collinear magnetoresistance
• Topological surface state under graphene for two-dimensional spintronics in air
• The effect of the spin-orbit interaction on the band gap of half-metals
• Perpendicular Reading of Single Confined Magnetic Skyrmions
• Formation of magnetic skyrmions with tunable properties in PdFe bilayer deposited on Ir(111)
• Skyrmion lifetimes in ultrathin films
• Chirality-driven orbital magnetic moments as a new probe for topological magnetic structures
• B-T phase diagram of Pd/Fe/Ir(111) computed with parallel tempering Monte Carlo
• Impact of the skyrmion spin texture on magnetoresistance
• Revealing the correlation between real-space structure and chiral magnetic order at the atomic scale

Cited by in corpus (2)

• Multiple-scattering approach for multi-spin chiral magnetic interactions: Application to the one- and two-dimensional Rashba electron gas
• Friedel oscillations induced by magnetic skyrmions: from scattering properties to all-electrical detection