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.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures, accepted by Journal of Nanotechnology. PACS numbers: 75.30.Gw, 75.70.Rf, 75.75.+