2017/04/30 by Keisuke Masuda, Yoshio Miura · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #cond-mat.mes-hall #cond-mat.mtrl-sci
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevb.96.054428
published as Phys. Rev. B 96, 054428 (2017) · 8 pages, 6 figures
arxiv created 2017/08/22 · arxiv updated 2017/08/23
We investigate bias voltage effects on the spin-dependent transport properties of Fe/MgAl2O4/Fe(001) magnetic tunneling junctions (MTJs) by comparing them with those of Fe/MgO/Fe(001) MTJs. By means of the nonequilibrium Green's function method and the density functional theory, we calculate bias voltage dependences of magnetoresistance (MR) ratios in both the MTJs. We find that in both the MTJs, the MR ratio decreases as the bias voltage increases and finally vanishes at a critical bias voltage V\rm c. We also find that the critical bias voltage V\rm c of the MgAl2O4-based MTJ is clearly larger than that of the MgO-based MTJ. Since the in-plane lattice constant of the Fe/MgAl2O4/Fe(001) supercell is twice that of the Fe/MgO/Fe(001) one, the Fe electrodes in the MgAl2O4-based MTJs have an identical band structure to that obtained by folding the Fe band structure of the MgO-based MTJs in the Brillouin zone of the in-plane wave vector. We show that such a difference in the Fe band structure is the origin of the difference in the critical bias voltage V\rm c between the MgAl2O4- and MgO-based MTJs.