The effect of crystal orientation on the magnetic anisotropy of Pd/Co metallic multilayers

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First-principles calculations of the magnetic anisotropy energies of Pd/Co(111) and Pd/Co(001) metallic multilayers have been performed to investigate the orientational dependence of the magnetic anisotropy. The calculated results indicate perpendicular magnetic anisotropy for both systems in accordance with experiments, and the anisotropy energy of the (111) oriented multilayer is more than four times larger than that of the (001) multilayer. The perpendicular magnetic anisotropies of these systems are explained by the same electronic origin, a large LDOS of |m| =2 character of Co minority spin near the Fermi energy. The small anisotropy of the (001) multilayer can be attributed to the weaker hybridization at the interface as compared to the case of the (111) system.