Control of the magnetism and magnetic anisotropy of a single-molecule magnet with an electric field.

Through systematic density functional calculations, the mechanism of the substrate induced spin reorientation transition in FePc/O-Cu(110) is explained in terms of charge transfer and rearrangement of Fe-3d orbitals. Moreover, we find giant magnetoelectric effects in this system, manifested by the sensitive dependence of its magnetic moment and magnetic anisotropy energy on an external electric field. In particular, the direction of magnetization of FePc/O-Cu(110) is switchable between in-plane and perpendicular axes, simply by applying an external electric field of 0.5 eV/Å along the surface normal.