8/7/22, 5:32 PM Anisotropy energy

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Anisotropy energy

Figure 2.3:
Energy density due to uniaxial anisotropy as a function of the angle
from a magnetic moment . The maximum energy has been normalised to
zero for clarity.

Anisotropy is a dependence of energy level on some direction. If the

magnetic moments in a material
have a bias towards one particular
direction (the easy axis) then the material is said to have uniaxial
anisotropy, like cobalt. If the bias is towards many particular
directions, then the material has multiple
easy axes and it possesses
cubic anisotropy (see figure 2.4). Cubic crystals such
as iron and nickel have
this property  (Aharoni, 2000, p86).
Uniaxial and cubic anisotropy are forms of
magnetocrystalline
anisotropy as their properties in this
respect arise from the crystalline structure of the material.

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8/7/22, 5:32 PM Anisotropy energy

Figure 2.4:
Normalised cubic anisotropy energy surfaces
for (left) iron and (right) nickel. The different shapes

of the surfaces are a reflection of the sign of  (O'Handley,

1999) -- iron has a positive , nickel a negative (see

appendix C)

The anisotropy energy in transition metal magnets arises from

spin-orbit coupling. The typical fourth-order
approximation of the
parameterisation of uniaxial anisotropy (expressed as an energy
density)
is (Aharoni, 2000):

(2.5)

  (2.6)

The uniaxial anisotropy energy of a magnetic moment

The primary anisotropy constant of a

material procured through experiment measurements, expressed as a temperature-dependent energy

density
The secondary anisotropy constant of a material procured through experimental
measurements, expressed as a temperature-dependent energy density

where is the angle between and the easy

axis (being here the component of in the direction of

the
crystallographic axis, ). and are temperature-dependent
energy densities derived from

experiment, and can exist with either a

positive or negative sign. When the axis is easy, when

the axis becomes hard (which yields an easy plane).

Since constant terms can be neglected, an equivalent parameterisation is:

(2.7)

The typical parameterisation of cubic anisotropy is not

straightforward trigonometrically  (O'Handley,
1999):

(2.8)

The cubic anisotropy energy of a magnetic moment

A positive sign for yields easy axes along the body edges (100).
Conversely, a negative sign for

indicates that the easy axes

exist across the diagonals (111) (Blundell, 2001).

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8/7/22, 5:32 PM Anisotropy energy

The energy for a system of magnetic moments is given by:

(2.9)

where is either
or .

It is worth noting that in some materials which are considered

isotropic (i.e. K = K = 0) from a

crystalline
perspective, such as permalloy, the contribution to the total energy
from the anisotropy is zero.

There are other types of anisotropy than magnetocrystalline.

Magnetostriction is an anisotropy caused by
the expansion or
contraction of a ferromagnet along the direction of the magnetisation
(Aharoni, 2000,
p87). The so-called shape anisotropy
(Paine et al., 1955) (also known as ``configurational stability''
(Ha
et  al., 2003)) is the direction in which the magnetisation will
prefer to lie on account of the physical
geometry of the sample. This
becomes more and more influential the smaller one's sample becomes.
This is one of the properties we investigate in this report.

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Richard Boardman
2006-11-28

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