TY - JOUR
T1 - First-principles study of tunneling magnetoresistance in Fe/MgAl 2O 4/Fe(001) magnetic tunnel junctions
AU - Miura, Yoshio
AU - Muramoto, Shingo
AU - Abe, Kazutaka
AU - Shirai, Masafumi
PY - 2012/7/20
Y1 - 2012/7/20
N2 - We investigated the spin-dependent transport properties of Fe/MgAl 2O 4/Fe(001) magnetic tunneling junctions (MTJs) on the basis of first-principles calculations of the electronic structures and the ballistic conductance. The calculated tunneling magnetoresistance (TMR) ratio of a Fe/MgAl 2O 4/Fe(001) MTJ was about 160%, which was much smaller than that of a Fe/MgO/Fe(001) MTJ (1600%) for the same barrier thickness. However, there was an evanescent state with Δ 1 symmetry in the energy gap around the Fermi level of normal spinel MgAl 2O 4, indicating the possibility of a large TMR in Fe/MgAl 2O 4/Fe(001) MTJs. The small TMR ratio of the Fe/MgAl 2O 4/Fe(001) MTJ was due to new conductive channels in the minority spin states resulting from a band-folding effect in the two-dimensional Brillouin zone of the in-plane wave vector (k -) of the Fe electrode. Since the in-plane cell size of MgAl 2O 4 is twice that of the primitive in-plane cell size of bcc Fe, the bands in the boundary edges are folded, and minority-spin states coupled with the Δ 1 evanescent state in the MgAl 2O 4 barrier appear at k -=0, which reduces the TMR ratio of the MTJs significantly.
AB - We investigated the spin-dependent transport properties of Fe/MgAl 2O 4/Fe(001) magnetic tunneling junctions (MTJs) on the basis of first-principles calculations of the electronic structures and the ballistic conductance. The calculated tunneling magnetoresistance (TMR) ratio of a Fe/MgAl 2O 4/Fe(001) MTJ was about 160%, which was much smaller than that of a Fe/MgO/Fe(001) MTJ (1600%) for the same barrier thickness. However, there was an evanescent state with Δ 1 symmetry in the energy gap around the Fermi level of normal spinel MgAl 2O 4, indicating the possibility of a large TMR in Fe/MgAl 2O 4/Fe(001) MTJs. The small TMR ratio of the Fe/MgAl 2O 4/Fe(001) MTJ was due to new conductive channels in the minority spin states resulting from a band-folding effect in the two-dimensional Brillouin zone of the in-plane wave vector (k -) of the Fe electrode. Since the in-plane cell size of MgAl 2O 4 is twice that of the primitive in-plane cell size of bcc Fe, the bands in the boundary edges are folded, and minority-spin states coupled with the Δ 1 evanescent state in the MgAl 2O 4 barrier appear at k -=0, which reduces the TMR ratio of the MTJs significantly.
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U2 - 10.1103/PhysRevB.86.024426
DO - 10.1103/PhysRevB.86.024426
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84864494988
SN - 0163-1829
VL - 86
JO - Physical Review B - Condensed Matter and Materials Physics
JF - Physical Review B - Condensed Matter and Materials Physics
IS - 2
M1 - 024426
ER -