Giant four-fold magnetic anisotropy in nanotwinned NiMnGa epitaxial films
Pavlo V. Bondarenko,
Julia Kharlan,
Sergey A. Bunyaev,
Olga Salyuk,
Ivan R. Aseguinolaza,
Jose M. Barandiaran,
Gleb N. Kakazei,
Volodymyr Chernenko,
Vladimir O. Golub
Affiliations
Pavlo V. Bondarenko
Institute of Magnetism NAS of Ukraine and MES of Ukraine, 36-B Vernadsky Blvd., 03142 Kyiv, Ukraine
Julia Kharlan
Institute of Magnetism NAS of Ukraine and MES of Ukraine, 36-B Vernadsky Blvd., 03142 Kyiv, Ukraine
Sergey A. Bunyaev
Institute of Physics for Advanced Materials, Nanotechnology and Photonics (IFIMUP)/Department of Physics and Astronomy, Faculty of Sciences, University of Porto, 4169-007 Porto, Portugal
Olga Salyuk
Institute of Magnetism NAS of Ukraine and MES of Ukraine, 36-B Vernadsky Blvd., 03142 Kyiv, Ukraine
Ivan R. Aseguinolaza
University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), Bilbao 48080, Spain
Jose M. Barandiaran
University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), Bilbao 48080, Spain
Gleb N. Kakazei
Institute of Physics for Advanced Materials, Nanotechnology and Photonics (IFIMUP)/Department of Physics and Astronomy, Faculty of Sciences, University of Porto, 4169-007 Porto, Portugal
Volodymyr Chernenko
University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), Bilbao 48080, Spain
Vladimir O. Golub
Institute of Magnetism NAS of Ukraine and MES of Ukraine, 36-B Vernadsky Blvd., 03142 Kyiv, Ukraine
A giant four-fold magnetic anisotropy (with an anisotropy field up to 4 kOe) was observed in the twinned NiMnGa epitaxial film. Its appearance is explained in terms of moderate coupling between twin variants having strong uniaxial magnetocrystalline anisotropies directed orthogonally when the intertwin exchange field is comparable with the anisotropy field. This finding paves the way to increase the order of magnetic anisotropy in a many-component system while keeping the value of the anisotropy field by tuning the intercomponent exchange strength and can be extended to exchange-coupled multilayers and arrays of nanoelements.
