First principles study of the electric field effect on magnetization and magnetic anisotropy of FeCo/MgO(001) thin film

Abstract

The magnetization and magnetic anisotropy of FeCo/MgO(001) thin film under electric field were investigated by the first-principles calculations. Three different interface configurations were considered: Co/Fe/MgO, Fe/Co/MgO, and FeCo/FeCo/MgO. It was found that the perpendicular anisotropy was preferred for all the configurations and enhanced with increasing electric field, which was consistent with experimental results. Furthermore, our calculations indicated that the FeCo/FeCo/MgO was the most stable configuration and had the largest perpendicular magnetic anisotropy energy. The results also showed that the FeCo/FeCo/MgO and Fe/Co/MgO configurations had larger magnetoelectric coefficients than those of the Co/Fe/MgO configuration and previous report about the Fe/MgO interface.