Manipulating magnetic anisotropies of Co/MgO(001) ultrathin films via oblique deposition

We present a systematic investigation of magnetic anisotropy induced by oblique deposition of Co thin films on MgO (001) substrates by molecular beam epitaxy at different deposition angles, i.e., 0°, 30°, 45°, 60°, and 75° with respect to the surface normal. Low energy electron diffraction (LEED), surface magneto-optical Kerr effect (SMOKE), and anisotropic magnetoresistance (AMR) setups were employed to investigate the magnetic properties of cobalt films. The values of in-plane uniaxial magnetic anisotropy (UMA) constant K_u and four-fold magnetocrystalline anisotropy constant K₁ were derived from magnetic torque curves on the base of AMR results. It was found that the value of K_u increases with increasing deposition angle with respect to the surface normal, while the value of K₁ remains almost constant for all the samples. Furthermore, by using MOKE results, the K_u values of the films deposited obliquely were also derived from the magnetization curves along hard axis. The results of AMR method were then compared with that of hard axis fitting method (coherent rotation) and found that both methods have almost identical values of UMA constant for each sample.