Theory of the strain-induced magnetic anisotropy of transition metal-noble metal multilayers

Abstract

It is shown that the magnetoelastic anisotropy energies of the transition metal-noble metal multilayers which have fcc [111] perfectly flat interfaces can be expressed with biaxial moduli, magnetostrictions, and lattice mismatch. The calculated magnetoelastic anisotropy energies are larger than the shape anisotropy energy of Ni and large enough for the effective uniaxial magnetic anisotropy energies to be positive. For films with a large interfacial roughness, we have found the strain-induced magnetic anisotropy reduced considerably.