Magnetism and exchange-bias effect at the MnN/Fe interface

Abstract

Based on ab initio calculations and spin dynamics simulations, we perform a detailed study on the magnetic properties of bulk MnN and the MnN/Fe interface. We determine the spin model parameters for the θ-phase of bulk MnN, and we find that the competition between the nearest and the next-nearest-neighbor interactions leads to antiferromagnetic ordering of the Mn spins, in agreement with previous theoretical and experimental results. At the MnN/Fe interface, a sizable Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction appears leading to a stable exchange-bias effect. We study the dependences of the exchange-bias effect on the thicknesses of the ferromagnetic and the antiferromagnetic layers, and we compare them to experimentally obtained results [Meinert et al., Phys. Rev. B 92, 144408 (2015)].