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Phys. Rev. Lett. 96, 147202 (2006) [4 pages]

Imaging Spin-Reorientation Transitions in Consecutive Atomic Co Layers on Ru(0001)

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Farid El Gabaly1,*, Silvia Gallego2, Carmen Muñoz2, Laszlo Szunyogh3, Peter Weinberger4, Christof Klein5, Andreas K. Schmid5, Kevin F. McCarty6, and Juan de la Figuera1,†
1Departamento de Física de la Materia Condensada and Centro de Microanálisis de Materiales, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Madrid 28049, Spain
2Instituto de Ciencia de Materiales de Madrid, CSIC, Madrid 28049, Spain
3Department of Theoretical Physics and Center for Applied Mathematics and Computational Physics, Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Budafoki út 8, H-1521 Budapest, Hungary
4Center for Computational Materials Science, Vienna University of Technology, Gumpendorferstrasse 1a, A-1060 Vienna, Austria
5Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories, Berkeley, California 94720, USA
6Sandia National Laboratories, Livermore, California 94550, USA

Received 19 December 2005; published 11 April 2006

See accompanying Physics Focus

By means of spin-polarized low-energy electron microscopy, we show that the magnetic easy axis of one to three atomic-layer thick cobalt films on Ru(0001) changes its orientation twice during deposition: One-monolayer and three-monolayer thick films are magnetized in plane, while two-monolayer films are magnetized out of plane. The Curie temperatures of films thicker than one monolayer are well above room temperature. Fully relativistic calculations based on the screened Korringa-Kohn-Rostoker method demonstrate that only for two-monolayer cobalt films does the interplay between strain, surface, and interface effects lead to perpendicular magnetization.

© 2006 The American Physical Society

URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.96.147202
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevLett.96.147202
PACS:
75.30.Gw, 68.37.Nq, 68.55.−a, 75.70.Ak

*Electronic addresses: farid.elgabaly@uam.es

http://hobbes.fmc.uam.es/loma

†Electronic address: juan.delafiguera@uam.es

 
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