2010/10/20 by Faleev, Sergey V., Mryasov, Oleg N., van Schilfgaarde, Mark
#FOS: Physical sciences #Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci)
paper · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1010.4086
We developed a parametrization of transmission probability that reliably captures essential elements of the tunneling process in magnetic tunnel junctions. The electronic structure of Fe/MgO system is calculated within the quasiparticle self-consistent GW approximation and used to evaluate transmission probability across (001) Fe/MgO interface. The transmission has a peak at +0.12 V, in excellent agreement with recent differential conductance measurements for electrodes with antiparallel spin. These findings confirm that the observed current-voltage characteristics are intrinsic to well defined (001) Fe/MgO interfaces, in contrast to previous predictions based on the local spin-density approximation, and also that many-body effects are important to realistically describe electron transport across well defined metal-insulator interfaces.