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Magnetic Moments and Electron Transport through Chromium-Based Antiferromagnetic Nanojunctions

We report the electronic, magnetic and transport properties of a prototypical antiferromagnetic (AFM) spintronic device. We chose Cr as the active layer because it is the only room-temperature AFM elemental metal. We sandwiched Cr between two non-magnetic metals (Pt or Au) with large spin-orbit coup...

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Autores principales: Bragato, Marco, Achilli, Simona, Cargnoni, Fausto, Ceresoli, Davide, Martinazzo, Rocco, Soave, Raffaella, Trioni, Mario Italo
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6213584/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30340431
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ma11102030
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author Bragato, Marco
Achilli, Simona
Cargnoni, Fausto
Ceresoli, Davide
Martinazzo, Rocco
Soave, Raffaella
Trioni, Mario Italo
author_facet Bragato, Marco
Achilli, Simona
Cargnoni, Fausto
Ceresoli, Davide
Martinazzo, Rocco
Soave, Raffaella
Trioni, Mario Italo
author_sort Bragato, Marco
collection PubMed
description We report the electronic, magnetic and transport properties of a prototypical antiferromagnetic (AFM) spintronic device. We chose Cr as the active layer because it is the only room-temperature AFM elemental metal. We sandwiched Cr between two non-magnetic metals (Pt or Au) with large spin-orbit coupling. We also inserted a buffer layer of insulating MgO to mimic the structure and finite resistivity of a real device. We found that, while spin-orbit has a negligible effect on the current flowing through the device, the MgO layer plays a crucial role. Its effect is to decouple the Cr magnetic moment from Pt (or Au) and to develop an overall spin magnetization. We have also calculated the spin-polarized ballistic conductance of the device within the Büttiker–Landauer framework, and we have found that for small applied bias our Pt/Cr/MgO/Pt device presents a spin polarization of the current amounting to ≃25%.
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spelling pubmed-62135842018-11-14 Magnetic Moments and Electron Transport through Chromium-Based Antiferromagnetic Nanojunctions Bragato, Marco Achilli, Simona Cargnoni, Fausto Ceresoli, Davide Martinazzo, Rocco Soave, Raffaella Trioni, Mario Italo Materials (Basel) Article We report the electronic, magnetic and transport properties of a prototypical antiferromagnetic (AFM) spintronic device. We chose Cr as the active layer because it is the only room-temperature AFM elemental metal. We sandwiched Cr between two non-magnetic metals (Pt or Au) with large spin-orbit coupling. We also inserted a buffer layer of insulating MgO to mimic the structure and finite resistivity of a real device. We found that, while spin-orbit has a negligible effect on the current flowing through the device, the MgO layer plays a crucial role. Its effect is to decouple the Cr magnetic moment from Pt (or Au) and to develop an overall spin magnetization. We have also calculated the spin-polarized ballistic conductance of the device within the Büttiker–Landauer framework, and we have found that for small applied bias our Pt/Cr/MgO/Pt device presents a spin polarization of the current amounting to ≃25%. MDPI 2018-10-18 /pmc/articles/PMC6213584/ /pubmed/30340431 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ma11102030 Text en © 2018 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Bragato, Marco
Achilli, Simona
Cargnoni, Fausto
Ceresoli, Davide
Martinazzo, Rocco
Soave, Raffaella
Trioni, Mario Italo
Magnetic Moments and Electron Transport through Chromium-Based Antiferromagnetic Nanojunctions
title Magnetic Moments and Electron Transport through Chromium-Based Antiferromagnetic Nanojunctions
title_full Magnetic Moments and Electron Transport through Chromium-Based Antiferromagnetic Nanojunctions
title_fullStr Magnetic Moments and Electron Transport through Chromium-Based Antiferromagnetic Nanojunctions
title_full_unstemmed Magnetic Moments and Electron Transport through Chromium-Based Antiferromagnetic Nanojunctions
title_short Magnetic Moments and Electron Transport through Chromium-Based Antiferromagnetic Nanojunctions
title_sort magnetic moments and electron transport through chromium-based antiferromagnetic nanojunctions
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6213584/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30340431
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ma11102030
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