Thickness-dependent interface magnetism of Fe/Cr/Fe trilayers.

Electronic structure and magnetic properties of FeN/Cr3/FeN bcc(100) trilayers (N is the number of atomic layers) are studied on the basis of ab initio calculations performed within the framework of the density functional theory in the local spin density approximation, using the full-potential LAPW method in slab geometry. According to our calculations, the magnetic moment of a surface Fe layer increases monotonically from 2.45 μB for N = 1 to 2.92 μB for N = 3 and practically does not change at further increase of the Fe film thickness. However, the magnetic moment in the interface Fe layer changes nonmonotonically with the Fe film thickness increase and is close to the surface value at N = 5 and 7. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J Quantum Chem, 2003 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]