Description of Substitutional Adsorption of Magnetic Ions on Metallic Surfaces with Formation of Monolayer Ferromagnetic Films Using the Spin-Density Functional Method

Abstract

At present time, a large number of experimental works have been devoted to the study of magnetic ordering in Fe, Co, and Ni ultrathin films [. The investigation of a nature of magnetism in these structures has a large fundamental interest through an observable dimensionality crossover of magnetic characteristics from three dimensional values for films with thickness d 10 nm to two dimensional values for films with thickness d 1-2 nm. It has been established that the long-range ferromagnetic order arises in films at some effective film thickness. However, the nature and regularities of this phenomenon remain not quite clear. In our paper [ it was developed in terms of the spin-density functional theory the description of influence of the temperature and ferromagnetic ordering on the adsorption of Fe, Co, and Ni transition metal ions on a nonmagnetic substrate with the formation of a submonolayer films. For case of nonactivated adsorption the conditions for the formation of magnetic monoatomic films stable with respect to island adsorption with a change in the coverage parameter θ are revealed. It was demonstrated that the inclusion of the ferromagnetic ordering substantially affects the adsorption energy and leads to its considerable increase.