2007/08/31 by David Jacob, D. Jacob, J. Fernández‐Rossier +2 · 1 citation
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Molecular Junctions and Nanostructures #Quantum and electron transport phenomena #Semiconductor materials and devices #cond-mat.mes-hall #cond-mat.mtrl-sci
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevb.77.165412
published as Phys. Rev. B 77, 165412 (2008) · 7 pages, 4 figures; revised for publication, new figures in greyscale
openalex publication_date 2008/04/10 · arxiv created 2008/04/16 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
We present ab initio calculations of the evolution of anisotropic magnetoresistance (AMR) in Ni nanocontacts from the ballistic to the tunnel regime. We find an extraordinary enhancement of AMR, compared to bulk, in two scenarios. In systems without localized states, such as chemically pure break junctions, large AMR only occurs if the orbital polarization of the current is large, regardless of the anisotropy of the density of states. In systems that display localized states close to the Fermi energy, such as a single electron transistor with ferromagnetic electrodes, large AMR is related to the variation of the Fermi energy as a function of the magnetization direction.