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Effect Of Oxygen Vacancies On Interlayer Exchange Coupling In Fe/Mgo/Fe Tunnel Junctions, Mikhail Ye Zhuravlev, Julian P. Velev, A. V. Vedyayev, Evgeny Y. Tsymbal
Effect Of Oxygen Vacancies On Interlayer Exchange Coupling In Fe/Mgo/Fe Tunnel Junctions, Mikhail Ye Zhuravlev, Julian P. Velev, A. V. Vedyayev, Evgeny Y. Tsymbal
Nebraska Center for Materials and Nanoscience: Faculty Publications
We have investigated the interlayer exchange coupling (IEC) in Fe/MgO/Fe(0 0 1) tunnel junctions with and without oxygen vacancies in MgO, using model and density functional calculations. The model predicts that IEC changes sign from ferromagnetic to antiferromagnetic if a defect level matches the Fermi energy. Ab initio calculations show that for perfect junctions, IEC is ferromagnetic and decreases exponentially with MgO thickness. Oxygen vacancies placed in the middle of MgO make IEC antiferromagnetic for three monolayers (MLs) of MgO, but do not change the sign of IEC for five MLs. The latter fact is explained within the model, which …