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arXiv · 1010.4086

Effect of electron correlations on (001) Fe/MgO interfaces

Sergey V. Faleev·Oleg N. Mryasov·Mark van Schilfgaarde
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Abstract

We developed a parametrization of transmission probability that reliably captures essential elements of the tunneling process in magnetic tunnel junctions. The electronic structure of Fe/MgO system is calculated within the quasiparticle self-consistent GW approximation and used to evaluate transmission probability across (001) Fe/MgO interface. 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.

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Sergey V. Faleev, Oleg N. Mryasov, Mark van Schilfgaarde. 2010-10-20. Effect of electron correlations on (001) Fe/MgO interfaces. https://arxiv.org/abs/1010.4086

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