Spintronics, or spin electronics, involves the study of active control and manipulation of spin degrees of freedom in solid-state systems. This article reviews the current status of this subject, including both recent advances and well-established results. The primary focus is on the basic physical principles underlying the generation of carrier spin polarization, spin dynamics, and spin-polarized transport in semiconductors and metals. Spin transport differs from charge transport in that spin is a nonconserved quantity in solids due to spin-orbit and hyperfine coupling. The authors discuss in detail spin decoherence mechanisms in metals and semiconductors. Various theories of spin injection and spin-polarized transport are applied to hybrid structures relevant to spin-based devices and fundamental studies of materials properties. Experimental work is reviewed with the emphasis on projected applications, in which external electric and magnetic fields and illumination by light will be used to control spin and charge dynamics to create new functionalities not feasible or ineffective with conventional electronics.

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Spintronics: Fundamentals and applications

The tunnel magnetoresistance (TMR) effect in magnetic tunnel junctions (MTJs)1,2 is the key to developing magnetoresistive random-access-memory (MRAM), magnetic sensors and novel programmable logic devices3,4,5. Conventional MTJs with an amorphous aluminium oxide tunnel barrier, which have been extensively studied for device applications, exhibit a magnetoresistance ratio up to 70% at room temperature6. This low magnetoresistance seriously limits the feasibility of spintronics devices. Here, we report a giant MR ratio up to 180% at room temperature in single-crystal Fe/MgO/Fe MTJs. The origin of this enormous TMR effect is coherent spin-polarized tunnelling, where the symmetry of electron wave functions plays an important role. Moreover, we observed that their tunnel magnetoresistance oscillates as a function of tunnel barrier thickness, indicating that coherency of wave functions is conserved across the tunnel barrier. The coherent TMR effect is a key to making spintronic devices with novel quantum-mechanical functions, and to developing gigabit-scale MRAM.

Giant room-temperature magnetoresistance in single-crystal Fe/MgO/Fe magnetic tunnel junctions

Magnetically engineered magnetic tunnel junctions (MTJs) show promise as non-volatile storage cells in high-performance solid-state magnetic random access memories (MRAM). The performance of these devices is currently limited by the modest (< approximately 70%) room-temperature tunnelling magnetoresistance (TMR) of technologically relevant MTJs. Much higher TMR values have been theoretically predicted for perfectly ordered (100) oriented single-crystalline Fe/MgO/Fe MTJs. Here we show that sputter-deposited polycrystalline MTJs grown on an amorphous underlayer, but with highly oriented (100) MgO tunnel barriers and CoFe electrodes, exhibit TMR values of up to approximately 220% at room temperature and approximately 300% at low temperatures. Consistent with these high TMR values, superconducting tunnelling spectroscopy experiments indicate that the tunnelling current has a very high spin polarization of approximately 85%, which rivals that previously observed only using half-metallic ferromagnets. Such high values of spin polarization and TMR in readily manufactureable and highly thermally stable devices (up to 400 degrees C) will accelerate the development of new families of spintronic devices.

Giant tunnelling magnetoresistance at room temperature with MgO (100) tunnel barriers

In this chapter, we will restrict our attention to the ferrites and a few other closely related materials. The great interest in ferrites stems from their unique combination of a spontaneous magnetization and a high electrical resistivity. The observed magnetization results from the difference in the magnetizations of two non-equivalent sub-lattices of the magnetic ions in the crystal structure. Materials of this type should strictly be designated as “ferrimagnetic” and in some respects are more closely related to anti-ferromagnetic substances than they are to ferromagnetics in which the magnetization results from the parallel alignment of all the magnetic moments present. We shall not adhere to this special nomenclature except to emphasize effects, which are due to the existence of the sub-lattices.

Ferromagnetic materials

Electrons have a charge and a spin, but until recently these were considered separately. In classical electronics, charges are moved by electric fields to transmit information and are stored in a capacitor to save it. In magnetic recording, magnetic fields have been used to read or write the information stored on the magnetization, which 'measures' the local orientation of spins in ferromagnets. The picture started to change in 1988, when the discovery of giant magnetoresistance opened the way to efficient control of charge transport through magnetization. The recent expansion of hard-disk recording owes much to this development. We are starting to see a new paradigm where magnetization dynamics and charge currents act on each other in nanostructured artificial materials. Ultimately, 'spin currents' could even replace charge currents for the transfer and treatment of information, allowing faster, low-energy operations: spin electronics is on its way.

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The emergence of spin electronics in data storage

We present first-principles based calculations of the tunneling conductance and magnetoconductance of epitaxial $\mathrm{Fe}(100)|\mathrm{MgO}(100)|\mathrm{Fe}(100)$ sandwiches. Our results indicate that tunneling is much more interesting and complicated than the simple barrier model used previously. We obtain the following general results: (1) Tunneling conductance depends strongly on the symmetry of the Bloch states in the electrodes and of the evanescent states in the barrier layer. (2) Bloch states of different symmetry decay at different rates within the barrier. The decay rate is determined by the complex energy bands of the same symmetry in the barrier. (3) There may be quantum interference between the decaying states in the barrier. This leads to an oscillatory dependence of the tunneling current on ${k}_{\ensuremath{\Vert}}$ and a damped oscillatory dependence on barrier thickness. (4) Interfacial resonance states can allow particular Bloch states to tunnel efficiently through the barrier. For $\mathrm{Fe}(100)|\mathrm{MgO}(100)|\mathrm{Fe}(100)$ our calculations indicate that quite different tunneling mechanisms dominate the conductance in the two spin channels. In the majority channel the conductance is primarily via Bloch electrons with small transverse momentum. One particular state with ${\ensuremath{\Delta}}_{1}$ symmetry is able to effectively couple from the Fe into the MgO. In the minority channel the conductance is primarily through interface resonance states especially for thinner layers. We predict a large magnetoresistance that increases with barrier thickness.

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Spin-dependent tunneling conductance of Fe | MgO | Fe sandwiches

Bloch waves may be reflected and transmitted by planar interfaces. In this paper, we show how the reflection and transmission amplitudes for Bloch waves can be calculated within the layer Korringa-Kohn-Rostoker formalism. The calculated transmission probability is used to calculate the spin-dependent tunneling conductance for magnetic tunnel junctions formed from ZnSe semiconducting layers sandwiched between two ferromagnetic Fe layers. {copyright} {ital 1999} {ital The American Physical Society}

Layer KKR approach to Bloch-wave transmission and reflection: Application to spin-dependent tunneling

Fe–Co alloys in the α phase are soft magnetic materials which have high saturation inductions over a wide range of compositions. However, above about 1250 K, an α to γ phase transition occurs. The fcc-based, γ, high-temperature phase is paramagnetic at this temperature. In this work the low-temperature ordered B2, or α′, phase, as well as the disordered bcc phase of FeCo alloys, have been studied with first-principles electronic-structure calculations using the layer Korringa–Kohn–Rostoker method. The variation of moment with composition (Slater–Pauling curve) is discussed. For equiatomic FeCo, interatomic exchange couplings are derived from first principles. These exchange interactions are compared to those obtained for pure Fe and Co, and are used within a mean-field theory to estimate the hypothetical Curie temperature of the α phase.

Electronic structure, exchange interactions, and Curie temperature of FeCo

The properties of the simple metals are controlled largely by three density parameters: the equilibrium average valence electron density 3/4\ensuremath{\pi}${\mathit{r}}_{\mathit{s}}^{3}$, the valence z, and the density on the surface of the Wigner-Seitz cell, represented here by the equilibrium number ${\mathit{N}}_{\mathrm{int}}$ of valence electrons in the interstitial region. To demonstrate this fact, and as a refinement of the ``stabilized jellium'' or ``structureless pseudopotential'' model, we propose a structured local electron-ion pseudopotential w(r) which depends upon either ${\mathit{r}}_{\mathit{s}}$ and z (``universal'' choice for ${\mathit{N}}_{\mathrm{i}\mathrm{n}\mathrm{t})}$, or ${\mathit{r}}_{\mathit{s}}$, z, and ${\mathit{N}}_{\mathrm{int}}$ for each metal (``individual'' potential). Calculated binding energies, bulk moduli, and pressure derivatives of bulk moduli, evaluated in second-order perturbation theory, are in good agreement with experiment for 16 simple metals, and the bulk moduli are somewhat better than those calculated from first-principles nonlocal norm-conserving pseudopotentials. Structural energy differences agree with those from a nonlocal pseudopotential calculation for Na, Mg, and Al, but not for Ca and Sr. Our local pseudopotential w(r) is analytic for all r, and displays an exponential decay of the core repulsion as r\ensuremath{\rightarrow}\ensuremath{\infty}. The decay length agrees with that of the highest atomic core orbital of s or p symmetry, corroborating the physical picture behind this ``evanescent core'' form. The Fourier transform or form factor w(Q) is also analytic, and decays rapidly as Q\ensuremath{\rightarrow}\ensuremath{\infty}; its first and only zero ${\mathit{Q}}_{0}$ is close to conventional or empirical values. In comparison with nonlocal pseudopotentials, local ones have the advantages of computational simplicity, physical transparency, and suitability for tests of density functional approximations against more-exact many-body methods.

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Dominant density parameters and local pseudopotentials for simple metals

We consider spin-dependent tunneling between two ferromagnets separated by a simple step barrier, and examine four models for the magnetoconductance ratio $\ensuremath{\Delta}G/G:$ A model due to Julliere which characterizes the magnetoconductance solely in terms of the tunneling spin polarization, a model due to Slonczewski which provides an approximate expression for the magnetoconductance of free electrons tunneling through a barrier, the exact expression for the magnetoconductance of free electrons tunneling through a barrier, and the numerical calculation of the magnetoconductance of band electrons in iron tunneling through a barrier. We find that the Julliere model does not accurately describe the magnetoconductance of free electrons tunneling through a barrier. Although Slonczewski's model provides a good approximation to the exact expression for free electrons in the limit of thick barriers, we find that the tunneling of band electrons shows features that are not described well by any free electron picture and which reflect the details of the band structure of iron at the Fermi energy.

J. M. MacLaren

Papers

Spin-dependent tunneling conductance of Fe | MgO | Fe sandwiches

Layer KKR approach to Bloch-wave transmission and reflection: Application to spin-dependent tunneling

Electronic structure, exchange interactions, and Curie temperature of FeCo

Dominant density parameters and local pseudopotentials for simple metals

Validity of the Julliere model of spin-dependent tunneling