Effects of overlayer capping and lattice strain on perpendicular magnetic anisotropy of TM|FePt|MgO heterostructures.

Magnetic tunnel junctions (MTJs) with ferromagnetic electrodes possessing the strong perpendicular magnetocrystalline anisotropy (PMA) are of great interest as they have a potential for realizing next-generation high-density non-volatile memory and logic chips. To date, it is an urgent and critical issue to continuously promote the PMAs through feasible modifications such as the substitution of ferromagnetic layers as well as the overlayer coating on them. Here, we perform the relativistic first principles calculations of TM|L1-FePt|MgO sandwich systems, and demonstrate that the changes in PMAs by capping TM layers are always giant and positive, e.