MAGNETOSTRICTIVE SURFACE ANISOTROPY OF EPITAXIAL MULTILAYERS

An additional perpendicular surface anisotropy term resulting from lattice misfit is found for both coherent and incoherent states. From magnetic strain theory it can be concluded that the magnetic surface anisotropy depends not only on the thickness of the magnetic layer but also on the thickness of the nonmagnetic layer. The influence of surface roughness on magnetostrictive anisotropy is also calculated. We find surface roughness usually reduces the magnitude of surface anisotropy irrespective of its sign. Furthermore, a strong 1/t2 dependence of magnetic anisotropy for multilayers with identical elastic constants is found.