Abstract
Systematic studies of rare-earth transition-metal amorphous compositionally modulated films (CMF) permit the development of a detailed model for understanding the magnetization and perpendicular magnetic anisotropy and their distributions along the film normal. It is shown that the single-ion anisotropy of rare-earth ions with orbital angular momentum is the major contributor to the perpendicular anisotropy for this class of CMF. The calculated results agree well with the experimental data for Dy/Co and Tb/Fe CMF when the individual layer thicknesses are small enough (<10); these films have structures which can be characterized as compositionally modulated amorphous alloys.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 10446-10459 |
Number of pages | 14 |
Journal | Physical Review B |
Volume | 42 |
Issue number | 16 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - 1990 |
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Condensed Matter Physics