Room-temperature perpendicular magnetic anisotropy of MgO/Fe/MgO ultrathin films

Abstract

We used the anomalous Hall effect to study the magnetic properties of MgO/Fe(t)/MgO(001) structures in which the Fe thickness t ranged from 4 Å to 14 Å. For the iron deposited at 140 K, we obtained perpendicular magnetization at room temperature below the critical thickness of tc = (9 ± 1) Å. In the vicinity of tc, the easy magnetization axis switched from an out-of-plane orientation to an in-plane orientation, and the observed spin-reorientation transition was considered in terms of the competition among different anisotropies. The perpendicular magnetization direction was attributed to magnetoelastic anisotropy. Finally, the temperature-dependent spin-reorientation transition was analyzed for Fe thicknesses close to tc.