Magnetic anisotropy at nanoscale

Nanoscale objects often behave differently than their normal- sized counterparts. sometimes it is enough to be small in just one direction to exhibit unusual features. one example of such a phenomenon is a very specific in-plane magnetic anisotropy observed sometimes in very thin layers of various materials. here we recall a peculiar form of the free energy functional nicely describing the experimental findings but completely irrelevant and thus never observed in larger objects. © 2011 marek w. gutowski.