Regular Article

Unraveling the effect of oxygen on the magnetic map of Fe/Cr multilayers

¹ Facultad de Ciencias Físico-Matemáticas de la Universidad Autónoma de Sinaloa, Av. Las Americas y Blvd. Universitarios, Colonia Universitaria, C. P. 80010, Culiacán Sinaloa, Mexico
² UFR de Physique et d’Ingénierie, 3 rue de l’Université, 67000 Strasbourg, France

^a e-mail: smeza@uas.edu.mx

Received: 17 January 2020
Received in final form: 28 April 2020
Published online: 10 June 2020

Abstract

Recent experimental results have depicted a strong modification of the magnetic map when oxygen is added to Fe/Cr multilayers. Within ab initio DFT + U code we show that the Fe/O/Cr/Fe(001) semi-infinite system is unstable whereas oxygen tends to move on top of the Fe atomic layer. Focuss is therefore made on the O/Fe/Cr/Fe(001) semi-infinite slab which displays an interlayer exchange coupling different from the classical case when O is absent. The effect of the oxygen adsorbed layer is to alter strongly the local density of states on the Fe atoms: this can explain the modification of the interlayer exchange coupling. Both DFT-only and DFT + U approaches are investigated in order to point out the major effect of U on the magnetic polarization.