Magnetic anisotropies of epitaxial Fe/MgO(001) films with varying thickness and grown under different conditions

Fe films with thickness varying between 5 and 100 nm were grown on flat MgO(001) substrates while rotating the substrates. Hysteresis loops with one step and two steps were observed and interpreted in terms of a magnetization reversal mechanism with either two successive or two separate 90° domain wall (DW) nucleations, respectively. This recently introduced, novel mechanism for 180° magnetic transitions was used to quantitatively evaluate both the uniaxial magnetic anisotropy (UMA), which accompanies the intrinsic fourfold in-plane magnetic anisotropy, and the DW nucleation energy. The strength of both the UMA and the DW nucleation energy turns out to be inversely proportional to the thickness of the Fe layers for Fe/MgO(001). This suggests that the extra UMA and the DW nucleation/propagation for Fe layers are pure interface related effects. By comparing six 15 nm thick Fe/MgO(001) films deposited under different conditions, it is found that these interface related effects originate from the presence of atomic steps due to the substrate miscut and from the presence of strain relaxation resulting from lattice mismatch.