Ab initio study of the induced magnetic polarization of FePd (001) superlattices

Abstract This paper is devoted to a theoretical study of the importance of the interfacial interdiffusion for the understanding of the magnetic properties of Fe Pd (001) superlattices. We use an ab initio method (ASW) to determine self-consistently the electronic structure of the superlattices. For ‘perfect’ interfaces, we show that the total induced polarization ΔM is equal to 1.25μ B per interfacial atom (IA). We consider ‘imperfect’ interfaces by introducing interfacial ordered compounds (IOC) in order to study the corresponding enhancement of ΔM . With the two IOC studied here, we find ΔM≊1.35μ B / IA and ΔM≊1.51μ B / IA , which is approximately half of the measured value. Finally, we show that with the previous IOC, a 4 monolayers thick Pd spacer is completely polarized whereas two non-magnetic monolayers are obtained when the spacer is 5 monolayers thick in agreement with experiments.