Theory of tunneling magnetoresistance of an epitaxial Fe/MgO/Fe(001) junction
Top Cited Papers
- 10 May 2001
- journal article
- research article
- Published by American Physical Society (APS) in Physical Review B
- Vol. 63 (22), 220403
- https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevb.63.220403
Abstract
Calculation of the tunneling magnetoresistance (TMR) of an epitaxial Fe/MgO/Fe(001) junction is reported. The conductances of the junction in its ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic configurations are determined without any approximations from the real-space Kubo formula using tight-binding bands fitted to an ab initio band structure of iron and MgO. The calculated optimistic TMR ratio is in excess of 1000% for an MgO barrier of ≈20 atomic planes and the spin polarization of the tunneling current is positive for all MgO thicknesses. It is also found that spin-dependent tunneling in an Fe/MgO/Fe(001) junction is not entirely determined by states at the Γ point (k‖=0) even for MgO thicknesses as large as ≈20 atomic planes. All these results are explained qualitatively in terms of the Fe majority- and minority-spin surface spectral densities and the complex MgO Fermi surface.Keywords
This publication has 14 references indexed in Scilit:
- Theory of tunneling magnetoresistance in a junction with a nonmagnetic metallic interlayerPhysical Review B, 1999
- Layer KKR approach to Bloch-wave transmission and reflection: Application to spin-dependent tunnelingPhysical Review B, 1999
- Closed-form solutions to surface Green's functionsPhysical Review B, 1997
- Observation of low-lying resonance states of at the S and S He thresholdsPhysical Review A, 1997
- Large Magnetoresistance at Room Temperature in Ferromagnetic Thin Film Tunnel JunctionsPhysical Review Letters, 1995
- Giant magnetic tunneling effect in Fe/Al2O3/Fe junctionJournal of Magnetism and Magnetic Materials, 1995
- Giant monolayer magnetization of Fe on MgO: A nearly ideal two-dimensional magnetic systemPhysical Review B, 1991
- Intrinsic Surface States of MgO (100) and (110) SurfacesJournal of the Physics Society Japan, 1978
- Auger and loss spectroscopy study of surface contamination effect on the growth mode of iron epitaxial films on MgO(001)Thin Solid Films, 1976
- Direct calculation of the tunneling currentJournal of Physics C: Solid State Physics, 1971