Structural properties of Fe/Cu magnetic multilayers: a Monte Carlo approach

Abstract

Using atomistic Monte Carlo simulations, we investigated the impact of the interface on the structural properties of iron and copper (Fe/Cu) magnetic multilayers grown by Vorono\"i diagram. Interest in magnetic multilayers has recently emerged as they are shown to be promising candidates for magnetic storage media, magneto-resistive sensors, and personalized medical treatment. As these artificial materials show large differences in properties compared to conventional ones, many experimental and theoretical works have been dedicated on shedding light on these differences and tremendous results have emerged. However, little is known how the interfaces influence the structure of the layers around them. By a numerical approach, we show that the structure of each layer depends on its thickness and the interface morphology. The Fe and Cu layers can adopt either the body-centered-cubic (bcc) or face-centered-cubic (fcc) structure, while the interface can assume amorphous, bcc, fcc, or a mixture of bcc and fcc structures depending on the layer thicknesses. These results are in good agreement with the experiments. They could be helpful in understanding effects such as giant magneto-resistance from the structural viewpoint.