Related Experiment Video
Updated: May 9, 2026

Visualizing Uniaxial-strain Manipulation of Antiferromagnetic Domains in Fe1+YTe Using a Spin-polarized Scanning Tunneling Microscope
Published on: March 24, 2019
Tuning magnetic anisotropy in metallic multilayers by surface charging: an ab initio study
P Ruiz-Díaz1, T R Dasa, V S Stepanyuk
1Max-Planck-Institut für Mikrostrukturphysik Weinberg 2, D-06120 Halle, Germany.
Abstract:
Our ab initio studies show clear evidence that magnetic anisotropy (MA) and the direction of magnetization in metallic magnetic multilayers can be tailored at once by surface charging. By taking Fe-Pt multilayers as a representative example, we demonstrate that surface charging has a deep effect on the magnitude of the MA, which is composition dependent, achieving remarkably large values for systems featuring a single Fe layer capped with Pt. More intriguing is the behavior of the multilayers capped with iron bilayers, for which surface charging not only affects the value of the anisotropy but an easy-axis switching is also revealed. By analyzing the electronic structure of the magnetic layers and relating the MA to the orbital moment anisotropy, some insights about the origin of the MA from a local perspective can be inferred.
Related Concept Videos
Magnetic Field due to Moving Charges
Consider a point charge moving with a constant velocity. Like the electric field, the magnetic field at any point is directly proportional to the magnitude of the charge and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between the source point and the field point. However, unlike the electric field, the magnetic field is always perpendicular to the plane containing the line...
The Electrical Double Layer
Potential Due to a Magnetized Object
The vector...
Biasing of Metal-Semiconductor Junctions
In Schottky junctions, where the semiconductor is n-type, applying a positive voltage to the metal relative to the semiconductor reduces its Fermi...
π Electron Effects on Chemical Shift: Overview
Magnetic Susceptibility and Permeability
When diamagnetic materials are placed under an external magnetic field, the moments opposite to the field are induced. Hence, the susceptibility for diamagnets has a minimal negative value of 10-5–10-6. Since...

