Effective elastic and magnetoelastic anisotropies for thin films with hexagonal and cubic crystal structures

Abstract

In this work we present a detailed study on the elastic and magnetoelastic contributions for thin films and bulk materials with hexagonal and cubic crystalline structures. In contrast to bulk materials, the effective elastic anisotropy for thin films shows a strong dependence on the epitaxial order of the film on the substrate and the stress-free condition of the out-of-plane strain. The contributions of the elastic and magnetoelastic energies in the effective magnetic anisotropy of films with cubic or hexagonal lattice are obtained for certain epitaxial growth directions.