First-principles Studies of Local Structure Effects in Magnetic Materials

Abstract: This thesis focus on the magnetic behavior, from single atoms to bulk materials. The materials considered in this thesis have been studied by computational methods based on ab initio theory, density functional theory (DFT), including treatment of the spin-orbit coupling, non-collinear magnetism, and methods capable of treating discorded systems. Furthermore strongly correlated materials have been investigated using the dynamical mean field theory (DMFT). The uniaxial magnetic anisotropy energy (MAE) of the Fe2P was investigated using the full-potential linear muffin tin orbital (FP-LMTO) method. Based on a band structure analysis, the microscopical origin of the large magnetic anisotropy found for this system is explained. It is also shown that by straining the crystal structure, the MAE can be enhanced further. This opens up for the possibility of obtaining a room temperature permanent magnet based on the Fe2P. The spectral properties of Fe impurities in a Cs host have been investigated, for both surface and bulk systems, by means of combination of density-functional theory in the local density approximation and the dynamical mean-field theory (LDA+DMFT), using two different impurity solvers, the Hubbard I approximation (HIA) and the Exact Diagonalization (ED) method were used. It is shown that noticeable differences can be seen in the unoccupied part of the spectrum for different positions of Fe atoms inside the host. The calculations show good agreement with the experimental photoemission spectra. The stability of the 12-fold metal-phosphorous coordination, existing in the meteorite mineral melliniite has been investigated trough total energy calculations using the coherent potential approximation (CPA) combined with an analysis of the chemical bonds, performed by balanced crystal overlap population (BCOOP). It was shown that its uniquely high metal–phosphorous coordination is due to a balance between covalent Fe–P binding, configurational entropy and a weaker nickel–phosphorus binding. Supported clusters have drawn a lot of attention as possible building blocks for future data storage applications. This topic was investigated using a real space noncollinear formalism where the exchange interactions between Co atoms were shown to be tuned by varying the substrate surface composition. Furthermore the spin dynamics of small Co clusters an a Cu(111) surface have been investigated and a new kind of dynamics, where magnetization switching can be accelerated by decreasing the switching field, has been found. A method for calculating the electronic structure for both ordered and disordered alloys, the augmented space recursion (ASR) method, have been extended to treat non-collinear magnetic order. The method has been used to investigate the energy stability of non-collinear arrangements of MnPt and Mn3Rh alloys.