Using first-principles calculations, we investigated the impact of chromium (Cr) and vanadium (V) impurities on the magnetic anisotropy and spin polarization in Fe/MgO magnetic tunnel junctions. It is demonstrated using layer resolved anisotropy calculation technique, that while the impurity near the interface has a drastic effect in decreasing the perpendicular magnetic anisotropy (PMA), its position within the bulk allows maintaining high surface PMA. Moreover, the effective magnetic anisotropy has a strong tendency to go from in-plane to out-of-plane character as a function of Cr and V concentration favoring out-of-plane magnetization direction for ~1.5 nm thick Fe layers at impurity concentrations above 20 %. At the same time, spin polarization is not affected and even enhanced in most situations favoring an increase of tunnel magnetoresistance (TMR) values.
@article{arxiv.1404.3523,
title = {Impurity induced enhancement of perpendicular magnetic anisotropy in Fe/MgO tunnel junctions},
author = {A. Hallal and B. Dieny and M. Chshiev},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1404.3523},
year = {2016}
}