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Science 31 August 2007:
Vol. 317. no. 5842, pp. 1199 - 1203
DOI: 10.1126/science.1146110
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Reports

Large Magnetic Anisotropy of a Single Atomic Spin Embedded in a Surface Molecular Network

Cyrus F. Hirjibehedin,1 Chiung-Yuan Lin,1,2 Alexander F. Otte,1,3 Markus Ternes,1,4 Christopher P. Lutz,1 Barbara A. Jones,1 Andreas J. Heinrich1

Magnetic anisotropy allows magnets to maintain their direction of magnetization over time. Using a scanning tunneling microscope to observe spin excitations, we determined the orientation and strength of the anisotropies of individual iron and manganese atoms on a thin layer of copper nitride. The relative intensities of the inelastic tunneling processes are consistent with dipolar interactions, as seen for inelastic neutron scattering. First-principles calculations indicate that the magnetic atoms become incorporated into a polar covalent surface molecular network in the copper nitride. These structures, which provide atom-by-atom accessibility via local probes, have the potential for engineering anisotropies large enough to produce stable magnetization at low temperatures for a single atomic spin.

1 IBM Research Division, Almaden Research Center, San Jose, CA 95120, USA.
2 Center for Probing the Nanoscale, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94309, USA.
3 Kamerlingh Onnes Laboratorium, Universiteit Leiden, 2300 RA Leiden, Netherlands.
4 Institut de Physique des Nanostructures, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland.

To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: heinrich{at}almaden.ibm.com

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THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
Revealing Magnetic Interactions from Single-Atom Magnetization Curves.
F. Meier, L. Zhou, J. Wiebe, and R. Wiesendanger (2008)
Science 320, 82-86
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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)