Crystalline orientation-related magnetic anisotropy in transition metal dichalcogenides 1T′-MoTe2/Co heterostructures.

• Crystalline orientation-related magnetic anisotropy in transition metal dichalcogenides 1T′-MoTe 2 /Co heterostructures. • Studies of magnetic anisotropy in 1T′-MoTe 2 /Co heterostructures from both experiments and first-principles calculations. • Strain effect on the induced magnetic anisotropy. • The easy axis of Co magnetic anisotropy is confirmed to be along the b -axis of MoTe 2. The semimetal transition metal dichalcogenides (TMD) MoTe 2 have attracted extensive research interests in Spintronics. The understanding of the magnetic properties of MoTe 2 /Ferromagnetic (FM) heterostructures is critical to the design of novel Spintronics-based devices. However, there is lack of research on the magnetic anisotropy of the semimetal TMD/FM. Here, we demonstrate the in-plane crystalline orientation-related magnetic properties of MoTe 2 /Co to clarify the relationship between the crystalline orientation and the magnetic anisotropy. We carried out the studies of crystalline orientation-related magnetic anisotropy in 1T′-MoTe 2 /Co heterostructures from both experiments and first-principles calculations. Our results show that for Co with different thicknesses, the easy axis of Co film is along the b -axis of MoTe 2 with uniaxial magnetic anisotropy. It is also consistent with the results of our theoretical results. When Co film thickness increases, the magnetocrystalline anisotropy (MCA) oscillates around a constant value with a lower MCA along the out-of-plane direction. Meanwhile, the demagnetization energy which increases linearly as a function of Co thickness, which would make the easy axis in-plane. Our work may give a fundamental inspiration for Spintronics based devices with semi-metallic TMDs/ferromagnetic materials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]