Surface spin slips in thin holmium films

F. H. S. Sales, A. L. Dantas, and A. S. Carrio Citation: AIP Advances 2, 032158 (2012); doi: 10.1063/1.4750030 View online: http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4750030 View Table of Contents: http://aipadvances.aip.org/resource/1/AAIDBI/v2/i3 Published by the American Institute of Physics.

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AIP ADVANCES 2, 032158 (2012)

Surface spin slips in thin holmium lms

F. H. S. Sales,1,a A. L. Dantas,2 and A. S. Carrico3
1 2

Department of Physics, IFMA, S o Lus, MA, Brazil 65030-005, Brazil a Department of Physics, UERN, Mossor , RN, Brazil 59610-210, Brazil o 3 Department of Physics, UFRN, Natal, RN, Brazil 59072-970, Brazil (Received 5 June 2012; accepted 21 August 2012; published online 29 August 2012)

We report a theoretical investigation of new spin slips phases of thin holmium (Ho) lms. The new phases originate from the loss of coordination of atoms in the near surface region, which affects the balance between exchange and anisotropy energies, favoring the alignment of near surface spins along the basal plane easy axis directions. Copyright 2012 Author(s). This article is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4750030]

There is currently great interest in connement effects in articial magnetic systems. Magnetic systems with bulk periodic patterns deserve special attention. Rare-earth (RE) elements have a rich variety of periodic magnetic phases, induced either by external magnetic elds or by temperature. The helix period is an intrinsic length scale of RE materials bulk equilibrium phases. As a result connement effects are likely to be stronger for thin RE lms thicknesses of the order of the helix period.19 There is a good deal of theoretical work on the dramatic changes in the magnetic phases of thin Ho lms for thicknesses close to and smaller than the helix period.79 These studies focused on the impact of connement on the helical and fan phase, which are genuine manifestations of the RE competing exchange energy interactions. As appropriate to temperatures close to the Neel temperature, these studies have used a Heisenberg hamiltonian stressing the prevalence of exchange energies over the basal plane hexagonal anisotropy energy. In this paper we focus on anisotropy energy effects on Ho thin lms. The balance between the exchange and basal anisotropy energies in Ho is a key feature of the Ho magnetic phases at low temperatures. There are prominent anisotropy effects for low temperature helimagnetic RE metals. New states emerge from the prevalence of the anisotropy energy over the exchange energy. For holmium the basal-plane moments bunch strongly around the easy b directions, leading to a magnetic pattern commensurable with the lattice. The modications in this basic gure as the temperature raises, lead to various spin slip patterns at certain temperature intervals.1013, 15 The existence of lattice commensurate phases in Holmium bulk samples, fullls the requirement imposed by the hexagonal anisotropy. The exchange energy alone would lead to a basal plane regularly spiraling helix. The stability of the commensurate phases depends on how well the gain in anisotropy energy, with spins locked to near easy axis directions in the basal plane, counter-balances the increase in the exchange energy. In thin Ho lms connement effects and the lack of surface neighbors lead to new features. The exchange energy balance is changed in favor of parallel orientation of near surface spins.2, 46 We show presently that this may affect the commensurate phases of Ho. In this paper, we report a theoretical study of surface and connement effects on the commensurate phases of Ho at low temperatures. Our results indicate that near the surfaces the spins from a few atomic layers bunch together leading to modied spin slip patterns.

a Author to whom correspondence Should be addressed. Electronic mail: fsales@ifma.edu.br.

2158-3226/2012/2(3)/032158/6

2, 032158-1

Author(s) 2012

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Sales, Dantas, and Carrico

AIP Advances 2, 032158 (2012)

(a)

(b)

6(2) (c) (d)

2(222221)

2(212121)

2(221)

FIG. 1. Schematic representation of spins per plane of bulk commensurate structures in phases with magnetic unit cells containing (a) 12, (b) 11, (c) 9 and (d) 10 atomic layers. The temperature is 20 K and the external eld is zero. The red arrows indicate spin slip planes.

The equilibrium states are found using a theoretical model based on a self-consistent molecular eld algorithm,26 including simultaneously the effects of external magnetic eld, temperature and reduced coordination in the near surface region. We investigated thin Ho lms, consisting of a stack of atomic layers with equivalent spins, innitely extended in the x-y direction. The x-axis is along one of the easy directions of the hexagonal anisotropy energy. The spins in each monolayer are coupled by exchange interaction with spins in the nearest and next-nearest neighbor monolayers. The anisotropy is uniform throughout the lm, and in the surface region the spin exchange energy is reduced. The magnetic Hamiltonian is given by
N 1

E = J1 (g 1)2
n=1

J (n) J (n + 1)
N 2

+ J2 (g 1)2
n=1 N

J (n) J (n + 2)

+
n=1

6 K 6 cos 6n

(1)

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Sales, Dantas, and Carrico

AIP Advances 2, 032158 (2012)

(a)

(b)

(c)

(d)

(212)

(221221)

FIG. 2. Schematic conguration of spins per plane for thin Ho lms, for H = 0 and T = 20 K, with (a) 5, (b) 7 (c) 9 and (d) 13 atomic layers. As shown in the panel (d) the 13 layers lm display a surface modied (221221) spin slip phase.

where J1 and J2 describe the exchange energy interactions of a given spin with spins in the rst and second neighbor atomic layers. J (n) represents the total angular momentum per atom in the n-th 6 atomic layer. K 6 describes the hexagonal anisotropy energy and n is the angle with x-axis for spins in the n-th atomic layer. We use bulk Ho energy parameters, with J = 8, J1 = 47kB 5 , J2 = J1 /4cos (T), where (T) is the value of the temperature dependent turn angle. Although we are not presently focusing in surface modications of the helical state, it is necessary to have a good estimate of the relation between the exchange energy parameters. By using the measured bulk values14 of the turn angle (T), for each temperature T, we are neglecting variations of the turn angle near the surfaces. g = 5/4 is the Land e 6 factor, which corresponds to a saturation magnetic moment per atom of 10B , and K 6 (T ) describes the temperature dependence of the hexagonal anisotropy energy.16, 17 Before considering surface effects, we show in Fig. 1 typical bulk spin slips patterns.18 This is in a certain way a means of validating the theoretical model and the efciency of the self-consistent algorithm used in this paper. Furthermore, some of the spin slip patterns shown in Fig. 1 will help to identify the surface features in the corresponding spin slip phases of thin lms, as discussed below. In order to reproduce the bulk commensurate phases shown in Fig. 1 we use a system consisting of a thin lm with the number of layers equal to the number of layers in the magnetic unit cell of each particular spin slip phase, and impose cyclic boundary conditions. In Fig. 1 we show typical bulk Ho spin slips patterns at 20 K in the absence of external eld. The chosen bulk spin slip phases shown in Fig. 1(a)1(d) have magnetic unit cells with 12, 11, 9 and 10 atomic layers, and correspond to known spin slip phases in the absence of external eld.10, 18

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AIP Advances 2, 032158 (2012)

(a)

20 K

(b) 13 Layers

80K

(221221)
(c) 20 K

(212121) (d) 15 Layers 80K

(212121)

(212121)

FIG. 3. Schematic representation of spins per plane for 13 and 15 atomic layers thin Ho lms, at temperatures of 20 K and 80 K, in the absence of external eld. The shaded region (in orange) show spins in the near surface region.

The 12 atomic layers structure 6(2) (shown in panel (a)) consists of six spin pairs arranged at small angles with easy axis of the anisotropy energy. The 11 atomic layers structure 2(222221) (shown in panel (b)) contains a spin slip plane (shown in red color), with the spins oriented along the anisotropy easy axis, for every set of ve spin pairs oriented at small angles with easy axis of the anisotropy energy. Notice that in the 11-layer one-spin-slip structure, the bunched pairs of moments in the vicinity of the spin slip are disposed unsymmetrically with respect to the easy axis. The 9 atomic layers structure 2(212121) (shown in panel (c)) contains a spin slip for each pair of spins, oriented at small angles with easy axis of the anisotropy energy. The 10 atomic layers structure 2(221) (shown in panel (d)), contains a spin slip plane for every set of two pairs of spins oriented at small angles with easy axis of the anisotropy energy. Symbolically, each spin slip plane (singlet) is represented by the number 1 and each set of two atomic layers with spins arranged symmetrically at small angles spin slip is represented by the number 2. In Fig. 2 we show the low temperature (T = 20 K) equilibrium patterns for ultrathin lms with thicknesses ranging from 5 to 13 atomic layers, in the absence of external eld.

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Sales, Dantas, and Carrico

AIP Advances 2, 032158 (2012)

(a)

(b)

20 K

70 K

(212121) (c) (d)

(212121)

75 K

80 K

(212121)

Helix

FIG. 4. Schematic representation of spins per plane for the (212121) spin slip phase of bulk Ho, at temperatures of (a) 20 K, (b) 70 K, (c) 75 K, and (d) 80 K, in the absence of external eld.

The 5 layers lm is in the ferromagnetic state, with all spins pointing along the easy axis of the anisotropy energy. The 7 layers lm has the surface spins and the spins in the middle plane along an easy axis direction. The 9 layers lm has spins along the easy axis, like a spin slip, and also pair of spins oriented at small angles with the easy axis direction. However the lm is not thick enough so as to t the unit cell of a spin slip phase. The 13 layers lm displays a modied (221221) pattern, with surface spins (of atomic planes 1, 2, 3 and 13) pointing nearly along the easy axis. In Fig. 3 we show that low temperature surface modied (221221) phase evolves, by heating to 80 K, to a surface modied (212121) phase, with an increase (from 4 to 6) of the number of surface spins pointing nearly parallel along an easy axis direction. The 15 layers lm has a more stable surface phase. At T = 20 k it displays a surface modied (212121) spin slip phase, which remains almost unchanged up to the temperature of 80 K, beyond which the surface spin slip turns into a helical phase. In this temperature range the surface modied (212121) spin slip phase suffer minor changes in the angles between spins in the doublets (31 degrees at T = 20 K and 39 degrees at T = 80 K), keeping spins locked in the easy axis directions as shown in the T = 20 K and T = 80 K diagrams in Fig. 3. In Fig. 4 we show the temperature effects in the bulk (212121) spin slip phase. It remains almost unchanged from T = 20 K up to T = 70 K, only the relative orientation of spins in the doublets is

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AIP Advances 2, 032158 (2012)

changed from 32 degrees at T = 20 K to 40 degrees at T = 75 k. At T = 80 K it is no longer stable. We have found that at T = 78 K the (212121) spin slip phase turns into a helical phase, with a turn angle of 40 degrees. The extra stability of the surface modied (212121) spin slip phase of the 15 layers thin Ho lm, originates, as shown in Fig. 3(d), in the fact that there are two spin slips in the near surface region (one near each surface) accommodating spins nearly aligned along the easy axis, and a surface doublet consisting of the rst and second layer planes from each surface. In summary we have shown that the reduction in the coordination number of surface atoms modies the balance between exchange and hexagonal anisotropy energies, favoring the formation of surface modied spin slips phases. Our theoretical model includes the temperature effects on the basal plane hexagonal anisotropy as well as on the exchange energies, allowing the discussion of both the bulk Ho commensurate spin slips phases, by using suitable cyclic boundary conditions on a cell consisting of the basic unit of the bulk commensurate phases, as well as the modications of the bulk commensurate phases produced by connement and surface effects in thin Ho lms. The authors acknowledge support from CNPq, CAPES, FAPERN, and FAPEMA. The work of A. S. Carrico was supported by CNPq Grant 350773. The work of A. L. Dantas was supported by CNPq Grant 309676. The work of F. H. S. Sales was supported by FAPEMA Grant 00415/11.
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