Tuning magnetic anisotropy of ultrathin Fe films by coating with graphene or h-BN

Recent advances in the miniaturization progress of spintronic devices requires the ultrathin Fe film with perpendicular magnetic easy axis for many promising applications such as high density nonvolatile memory and high thermal stability logic chips. Therefore, it is important to achieve a large magnetic anisotropy of ultrathin Fe film with high thermal, chemical stability. In this work, we demonstrate the possibility of tuning magnetic anisotropy of ultrathin Fe films by coating with graphene or h-BN layer based on first-principles total-energy calculations. Our calculations show that graphene or h-BN coating layer can dramatically increases the magnetic anisotropy energy of ultrathin Fe film about 1.5-2 times, compared with its value of pristine Fe surfaces. Furthermore, we also show that the effect of graphene/h-BN coating layer is robust with the thickness of Fe film. These findings suggest a possible approach to realize the ultrathin Fe film with large and robust perpendicular magnetic anisotropy by coating with atomic-layer materials such as graphene, h-BN for future spintronic devices.