Tunneling magnetoresistance of FePt/NaCl/FePt(001)

¹ Beijing National Laboratory for Condensed Matter Physics, Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences Beijing 100190, China
² Centre for the Physics of Materials and Department of Physics, McGill University Montreal, Quebec, Canada H3A 2T8

^(a) xfhan@iphy.ac.cn

Received: 13 January 2014
Accepted: 4 March 2014

Abstract

We propose and theoretically investigate an interesting and potentially very attractive magnetic tunnel junction FePt/NaCl/FePt(001) for spintronics. It is attractive because the strain at the FePt/NaCl interface is relatively small and, as a result, spin injection from the FePt metal to the NaCl barrier is significant and thus a potentially large TMR ratio can be obtained. The electronic bands with the symmetry of L1₀ FePt cross the Fermi level for both the majority-spin and minority-spin channels, and the evanescent state with the symmetry dominates the electron transmission through the fcc NaCl barrier. Very respectable values of the tunnel magnetoresistance ratio are predicted. The microscopic physics of quantum transport in this system is systematically analyzed and understood.