Effect of correlations on electronic structure and transport across (001) Fe/MgO/Fe junctions

We developed a parametrization of transmission probability that reliably captures essential elements of the tunneling process in magnetic tunnel junctions. The electronic structure of the Fe/MgO/Fe junction is calculated within the quasiparticle self-consistent GW approximation and used to evaluate...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Physical review. B, Condensed matter and materials physics Condensed matter and materials physics, 2012-05, Vol.85 (17), Article 174433
Main Authors: Faleev, Sergey V., Mryasov, Oleg N., van Schilfgaarde, Mark
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Approximation
Condensed matter
Electrodes
Electronic structure
Iron
Magnesium oxide
Mathematical analysis
Tunnel junctions
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Summary:We developed a parametrization of transmission probability that reliably captures essential elements of the tunneling process in magnetic tunnel junctions. The electronic structure of the Fe/MgO/Fe junction is calculated within the quasiparticle self-consistent GW approximation and used to evaluate transmission probability across (001) Fe/MgO interfaces. 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.
ISSN:1098-0121
1550-235X
DOI:10.1103/PhysRevB.85.174433