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We have investigated the magnetic anisotropy of atoms located at crystalline sites with artificially lowered symmetry in ultrathin Co/Cu(001) and Fe/Ag(001) films nanostructured by grazing incidence ion-sculpting under UHV conditions. The nanoscale rippled morphology that develops under grazing incidence ion irradiation has been exploited to unbalance the number of atomic steps oriented parallel and perpendicular to the ripple direction, thus inducing a clearly observable in-plane uniaxial anisotropy. The correlation between the ion-induced evolution of the surface morphology and the uniaxial magnetic anisotropy allows to extract quantitative information on the uniaxial anisotropy energy of Co and Fe atoms located in the proximity of monoatomic steps. The dependence of the magnetic anisotropy upon the ion dose and the irradiation conditions are investigated for both Co/Cu(001) and Fe/Ag(001), demonstrating that the simmetry and intensity of the magnetic anisotropy of these systems can be controllably modified. |