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

By Hongxin Yang, M. Chshiev, B. Dieny, J. Lee, A. Manchon, K. Shin. 2010

517 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The perpendicular magnetic anisotropy (PMA) arising at the interface between ferromagnetic transition metals and metallic oxides are 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. Furthemore, it is shown that the PMA value weakens in case of over- or underoxidation when oxygen $p_z$ and transition metal $d_{z^2}$ orbitals overlap is strongly affected by disorder, in agreement with experimental observations in magnetic tunnel junctions.

Subfields: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Condensed Matter Physics, Electronic, Optical and Magnetic Materials

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/00eab09d5f7f0734bff1be90e936d90de282dc19

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In Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

In Condensed Matter Physics

In Electronic, Optical and Magnetic Materials

Citations in the corpus

Current-induced spin-orbit torques in ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic systems (2018, background): “The authors attributed this change of sign to the increase of the orbital moment of Fe and Co upon oxidation (Nistor et al., 2011; Yang et al., 2011).”
Basic principles of STT-MRAM cell operation in memory arrays (2013, background): “At this interface, the atomic orbits of Fe and O atoms at the interface hybridize, forming new Fe–O bonds [38], figure 5(a).”
Perpendicular magnetic anisotropy at transition metal/oxide interfaces and applications (2017, methodology): “Ab initio calculations later confirmed that hybridization between the sp-oxygen orbitals and the dz2 orbitals in the transition metal (Co or Fe) and the ensuing decrease in degeneracy in the transition metal d orbitals cause this anisotropy (Yang et al., 2011).”