Magnetism of rare-earth–transition-metal nanoscale multilayers. II. Theoretical analysis of magnetization and perpendicular magnetic anisotropy

Authors

• Z.S. Shan, University of Nebraska - Lincoln
• David J. Sellmyer, University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow
• Sitaram Jaswal, University of NebraskaFollow
• Y.J. Wang, University of Nebraska - Lincoln
• J.X. Shen, University of Nebraska - Lincoln

Document Type

Article

Date of this Version

December 1990

Comments

Published by American Physical Society. Phys. Rev. B 42, 10446 (1990). http://prb.aps.org. Copyright © 1990 American Physical Society. Permission to use.

Abstract

Systematic studies of rare-earth–transition-metal amorphous compositionally modulated films (CMF) permit the development of a detailed model for understanding the magnetization and perpendicular magnetic anisotropy and their distributions along the film normal. It is shown that the single-ion anisotropy of rare-earth ions with orbital angular momentum is the major contributor to the perpendicular anisotropy for this class of CMF. The calculated results agree well with the experimental data for Dy/Co and Tb/Fe CMF when the individual layer thicknesses are small enough (<10 Å); these films have structures which can be characterized as compositionally modulated amorphous alloys.