Manipulating magnetic anisotropies of Co/MgO(001) ultrathin films via oblique deposition**Project supported by the Chinese Academy of Sciences–The World Academy of Sciences (CAS–TWAS) Fellowship Program, the National Basic Research Program of China (Grant Nos. 2015CB921403 and 2012CB933102), and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 51427801, 11374350, and 11274361).

Abstract

We present a systematic investigation of magnetic anisotropy induced by oblique deposition of Co thin films on MgO (001) substrates by molecular beam epitaxy at different deposition angles, i.e., 0°, 30°, 45°, 60°, and 75° with respect to the surface normal. Low energy electron diffraction (LEED), surface magneto–optical Kerr effect (SMOKE), and anisotropic magnetoresistance (AMR) setups were employed to investigate the magnetic properties of cobalt films. The values of in-plane uniaxial magnetic anisotropy (UMA) constant Ku and four-fold magnetocrystalline anisotropy constant K1 were derived from magnetic torque curves on the base of AMR results. It was found that the value of Ku increases with increasing deposition angle with respect to the surface normal, while the value of K1 remains almost constant for all the samples. Furthermore, by using MOKE results, the Ku values of the films deposited obliquely were also derived from the magnetization curves along hard axis. The results of AMR method were then compared with that of hard axis fitting method (coherent rotation) and found that both methods have almost identical values of UMA constant for each sample.