Orbital magnetism at the surfaces of transition metals Article uri icon

abstract

  • The local orbital magnetic moments (Formula presented) at different layers (Formula presented) close to the surfaces of Fe, Co, and Ni are determined in the framework of a (Formula presented)-band Hamiltonian, which includes hybridizations, Coulomb interactions, and spin-orbit coupling on the same electronic level. Different directions of the magnetization δ are considered in order to quantify the anisotropy in (Formula presented) For each δ, the spin-polarized charge distribution and the local densities of states from which (Formula presented) is derived are calculated self-consistently. The role of the local atomic environment is investigated by performing calculations on the (001), (110), and (111) surfaces of the bcc, hcp, and fcc lattices. (Formula presented) is significantly enhanced at surface atoms as compared to the corresponding bulk moment (Formula presented) depends strongly on the local coordination number and is generally larger the more open the surface is. For example, for the Fe(001) surface (Formula presented) and for the Fe(110) surface (Formula presented) decreases abruptly as we move from the uppermost layer (Formula presented) to the second layer (Formula presented) After some oscillations, convergence to (Formula presented) is reached quite accurately for (Formula presented) The largest anisotropy in (Formula presented) is found at the hcp (0001) surface of Co (Formula presented) The orbital moments at pure surfaces are compared with results for deposited films by considering four layers of Co on Pd(111) as a representative example. © 1998 The American Physical Society.

publication date

  • 1998-01-01