Abstract
The Fe/MgO interface is an essential ingredient in spintronics as it shows giant tunneling magnetoresistance and strong perpendicular magnetic anisotropy (PMA). A recent study demonstrated that the insertion of an ultra-thin LiF layer between the Fe and MgO layers enhances PMA significantly. In this study, we perform x-ray magnetic circular dichroism measurements on Fe/LiF/MgO multilayers to reveal the origin of the PMA enhancement. We find that the LiF insertion increases the orbital-magnetic-moment anisotropy and thus the magnetic anisotropy energy. We attribute the origin of this orbital-magnetic-moment-anisotropy enhancement to the stronger electron localization and electron-electron correlation or the better interface quality with fewer defects.
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