Magnetic anisotropy of thin films of Co on Cu(111)

Abstract

The magnetic anisotropy of epitaxial ${\mathrm{Co}}_{N}/\mathrm{Cu}(111),1<~N<~7,$ films is investigated in terms of the relativistic spin-polarized screened Korringa-Kohn-Rostoker method by taking into account uniform relaxations of the Co interlayer distance between $\ensuremath{-}4%$ and $+3%$ with respect to the Cu parent lattice. While the spin-orbit coupling induced (band energy) part of the magnetic anisotropy is found to favor a perpendicular magnetization for $N>~2,$ because of the dominating contribution of the magnetic dipole-dipole interaction to the magnetic anisotropy energy, an in-plane magnetization is energetically preferred for essentially all relaxations and layer thicknesses. Only for $N=2,3$ the anisotropy between an in-plane and a perpendicular orientation of the magnetization is not significantly different. The theoretical results are in good agreement with recent experiments based on pulsed layer deposition.