No Arabic abstract
The origin of the interfacial perpendicular magnetic anisotropy (PMA) induced in the ultrathin Fe layer on the Au(111) surface was examined using synchrotron-radiation-based M{o}ssbauer spectroscopy (MS), X-ray magnetic circular dichroism (XMCD), and angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES). To probe the detailed interfacial electronic structure of orbital hybridization between the Fe 3$d$ and Au 6$p$ bands, we detected the interfacial proximity effect, which modulates the valence-band electronic structure of Fe, resulting in PMA. MS and XMCD measurements were used to detect the interfacial magnetic structure and anisotropy in orbital magnetic moments, respectively. $In$-$situ$ ARPES also confirms the initial growth of Fe on large spin-orbit coupled surface Shockley states under Au(111) modulated electronic states in the vicinity of the Fermi level. This suggests that PMA in the Fe/Au(111) interface originates from the cooperation effects among the spin, orbital magnetic moments in Fe, and large spin-orbit coupling in Au. These findings pave the way to develop interfacial PMA using $p$-$d$ hybridization with a large spin-orbit interaction.
We have performed a photoemission spectroscopy (PES) study of CeM2Al10 (M = Fe, Ru, and Os) to directly observe the electronic structure involved in the unusual magnetic ordering. Soft X-ray resonant (SXR) PES provides spectroscopic evidence of the hybridization between conduction and Ce 4f electrons (c-f hybridization) and the order of the hybridization strength (Ru < Os < Fe). High-resolution (HR) PES of CeRu2Al10 and CeOs2Al10, as compared with that of CeFe2Al10, identifies two structures that can be ascribed to structures induced by the c-f hybridization and the antiferromagnetic ordering, respectively. Although the c-f hybridization-induced structure is a depletion of the spectral intensity (pseudogap) around the Fermi level (EF) with an energy scale of 20-30 meV, the structure related to the antiferromagnetic ordering is observed as a shoulder at approximately 10-11 meV within the pseudogap. The energies of the shoulder structures of CeRu2Al10 and CeOs2Al10 are approximately half of the optical gap (20 meV), indicating that EF is located at the midpoint of the gap.
X-ray absorption spectroscopy was used to determine the valence state in La$_2$Co$_{1-x}$Mn$_{1+x}$O$_6$ ($xapprox 0.23$) thin films. We found that in spite of the non-stoichiometry, Co is in a divalent state while Mn ions show a mixed valence state. The relation of this finding with the magnetic properties of the films is discussed. X-ray magnetic circular dichroism measurements prove that magnetic anisotropy originates from Co spin-orbit coupling and it is strain-dependent: a strong increase of the angular contribution to the magnetic moment is found when in-plane (out-of-plane) and cell parameters get expanded (compressed). This behavior is reproduced by first order perturbation theory calculations.
The strong perpendicular magnetic anisotropy of $L{rm1_0}$-ordered FePt has been the subject of extensive studies for a long time. However, it is not known which element, Fe or Pt, mainly contributes to the magnetic anisotropy energy (MAE). We have investigated the anisotropy of the orbital magnetic moments of Fe 3$d$ and Pt 5$d$ electrons in $L{rm1_0}$-ordered FePt thin films by Fe and Pt $L_{2,3}$-edge x-ray magnetic circular dichroism (XMCD) measurements for samples with various degrees of long-range chemical order $S$. Fe $L_{2,3}$-edge XMCD showed that the orbital magnetic moment was larger when the magnetic field was applied perpendicular to the film than parallel to it, and that the anisotropy of the orbital magnetic moment increased with $S$. Pt $L_{2,3}$-edge XMCD also showed that the orbital magnetic moment was smaller when the magnetic field was applied perpendicular to the film than parallel to it, opposite to the Fe $L_{2,3}$-edge XMCD results although the anisotropy of the orbital magnetic moment increases with $S$ like the Fe edge. These results are qualitatively consistent with the first-principles calculation by Solovyev ${it et al.}$ [Phys. Rev. B $bf{52}$, 13419 (1995).], which also predicts the dominant contributions of Pt 5$d$ to the magnetic anisotropy energy rather than Fe 3$d$ due to the strong spin-orbit coupling and the small spin splitting of the Pt 5$d$ bands in $L{rm1_0}$-ordered FePt.
We investigated electronic structure and magnetic anisotropy in the Fe/MgO interface of magnetic metal and dielectric insulator under the Cr layer of small electronegativity, by means of the first-principles density functional approach. The result indicates that the interface resonance state gets occupied unlike a typical rigid band picture as the number of Fe layers decreases, finding large perpendicular anisotropies in the oscillating behavior for thickness dependence. We discuss scenarios of the two dimensional van Hove singularity associated with flat band dispersions, and also the accuracies of anisotropy energy in comparison with the available experimental data.
We report on the study of both perpendicular magnetic anisotropy (PMA) and Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction (DMI) at an oxide/ferromagnetic metal (FM) interface, i.e. BaTiO3 (BTO)/CoFeB. Thanks to the functional properties of the BTO film and the capability to precisely control its growth, we are able to distinguish the dominant role of the oxide termination (TiO2 vs BaO), from the moderate effect of ferroelectric polarization in the BTO film, on the PMA and DMI at the oxide/FM interface. We find that the interfacial magnetic anisotropy energy of the BaO-BTO/CoFeB structure is two times larger than that of the TiO2-BTO/CoFeB, while the DMI of the TiO2-BTO/CoFeB interface is larger. We explain the observed phenomena by first-principles calculations, which ascribe them to the different electronic states around the Fermi level at the oxide/ferromagnetic metal interfaces and the different spin-flip processes. This study paves the way for further investigation of the PMA and DMI at various oxide/FM structures and thus their applications in the promising field of energy-efficient devices.