title: First principles modeling of tunnel magnetoresistance of Fe/MgO/Fe trilayers.
abstract: We report ab initio calculations of nonequilibrium quantum transport properties of Fe/MgO/Fe trilayer structures. The zero bias tunnel magnetoresistance is found to be several thousand percent, and it is reduced to about 1000% when the Fe/MgO interface is oxidized. The tunnel magnetoresistance for devices without oxidization reduces monotonically to zero with a voltage scale of about 0.5-1 V, consistent with experimental observations. We present an understanding of the nonequilibrium transport by investigating microscopic details of the scattering states and the Bloch bands of the Fe leads.
authors.affiliation: Centre for the Physics of Materials and Department of Physics, McGill University, Montreal, PQ, H3A 2T8, Canada.
authors.forename: Derek
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Waldron
authors.forename: Vladimir
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Timoshevskii
authors.forename: Yibin
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Hu
authors.forename: Ke
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Xia
authors.forename: Hong
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Guo