Influence of interfacial roughness on the tunnel magnetoresistance
Journal
Physics Letters A
Journal Volume
287
Journal Issue
5月6日
Pages
415-418
Date Issued
2001
Author(s)
Li, Y.
Abstract
The influence of interfacial roughness on tunnel conductance (TC) and magnetoresistance (TMR) are investigated taking into account spin-orbit (SO) coupling in ferromagnet (FM)/insulator (semiconductor) (I(S))/FM junctions. Explicit expressions for spin relaxation are obtained for ballistic and diffusive transport, respectively. The TC is expressed as the sum of different spin channels. Spin-flip (SF) scattering due to SO coupling is much stronger for antiparallel alignment of magnetization in the two FMs. The SF scattering cause a significant decrease of TMR ratio. We find that surface spin scattering predominates which suggests that the interfacial states play a key role in the tunnel process. The feature of the reduction of TMR changes with the disorder configuration and the SO coupling strength. Resonant TMR occurs due to the hopping between the SO-split energy levels. © 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
SDGs
Type
journal article