Abstract
By means of first-principles density functional calculations, we study the structural, magnetic and electronic properties of YMnO3/MnO3 heterostructures. Although in the bulk the ground state of YMnO3 is an antiferromagnet, the YMnO3/MnO3 heterostructure stabilizes the ferromagnetic (FM) phase in YMnO3 in the interface region over a wide range of Coulomb repulsion parameters. The hypothetical FM phase of bulk YMnO3 is dielectric and due to substantial differences between the lattice constants in the ab plane, a strong magnetocrystalline anisotropy is present. This anisotropy produces a high coercivity of the unusual FM YMnO3 that can explain the large vertical shift in the hysteresis loops observed in recent experiments (Paul et al 2014 J. Appl. Crystallogr. 47 1054). The correlation between weak exchange bias and the vertical shift is proposed, which calls for reinvestigation of various systems showing vertical shifts.
Highlights
Heterostructures composed of competing magnetic and electric phases are often exploited as a source of novel physical phenomena and for their tailored new functionalities [1]
The most stable configuration is with LaO layers and SrO layers in agreement with similar results for other kinds of supercells [29, 30] and the Assuming the LaO layer at the interface, we report the results for the supercell with five YMnO3 layers at UINT = 2 eV and UINN = 3 eV with the magnetic ground state reported in figure 1
The interface layer shows half-metallic FM behavior with the LSMO region of the superlattice and its density of states (DOS) exhibiting a x2-y2 character at the Fermi level
Summary
Heterostructures composed of competing magnetic and electric phases are often exploited as a source of novel physical phenomena and for their tailored new functionalities [1]. Exchange bias is one such outcome of interfacial coupling across two different magnetic states [10], usually antiferromagnetic (AFM) and ferromagnetic (FM) phases. An uncommonly observed effect of exchange coupling across an AFM/FM interface is the shift along the magnetization axis or the vertical shift [16]. A recent study on heteroepitaxial interfaces involving YMnO3 and the weak anisotropic ferromagnet La0.7Sr0.3MnO3 (LSMO) showed an unusually large vertical shift. In this work we focus on the coupling between AFM YMnO3 and FM La2 3Sr1 3MnO3 to understand what is the specificity of this system to create a pure vertical shift.
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