“Switching” and re-entrant behaviour of magnetisation in ultrathin films of fcc Co upon deposition of Cu

¹ Ames Laboratory, Iowa State University - Ames, Iowa 50011, USA
² Hewlett-Packard Laboratories, 3500 Deer Creek Road, Bldg. 26U, Palo Alto, California 94304-1392, USA

Received: 18 February 1997
Accepted: 15 May 1997

Abstract

We analyse the easy magnetisation axis “switching” recently discovered in experiments on Co ultrathin films with a deposited submonolayer of Cu by ab initio methods. The present large-scale calculations show that the nanomagnetic pattern of a stepped Co(001) surface 2-3 monolayers thick with submonolayer quantities of Cu has a complex three-dimensional character. We show that the maximum non-collinearity of spin-directions is about , and the "switching” has a re-entrant character as a function of Cu coverage.