Effects of growth order on perpendicular magnetic anisotropy of heavy metal/ferromagnet/MgO tri-layered structures
Release time:2022-11-12
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- Journal:
- IEEE Magn. Lett.
- Key Words:
- Spin Electronics, Nanomagnetics, Information StorageCoupled Phenomena.
- Abstract:
- Previous experiments have shown that perpendicular magnetic anisotropy (PMA) in tri-layers consisting of a CoFeB layer, an MgO layer, and a nonmagnetic metal (NM) layer depends strongly on whether the CoFeB layer was grown on the top of NM layer or was capped by a NM layer. In this work, we studied the physical origin of this phenomenon through firstprinciples calculations. We took MgO/CoFe/Ta and Ta/CoFe/MgO as model structures and analyzed the magnetic anisotropy energy (MAE) therein. We found that the “substrate/Ta/CoFe/MgO” structure had a notably higher MAE than the “substrate/MgO/CoFe/Ta” structure. This difference results mainly from different stresses in the Ta layers, and the latter gives rise to a difference in the hybridization strength of in-plane orbits ( xy d , 2 2 x y d , x p and y p ). We also found that the p orbital hybridization in the Ta layers contributes significantly to the PMA in both structures.
- Indexed by:
- Journal paper
- Translation or Not:
- no
- Date of Publication:
- 2019-11-12