Nanoscale objects often behave differently than their ââ?¬Å?normal-sizedââ?¬Â 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.
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