Impact of lattice strain on the tunnel magnetoresistance in Fe/insulator/Fe and Fe/insulator/La0.67Sr0.33MnO3 magnetic tunnel junctions

Abstract

The objective of this work is to describe the tunnel electron current in single-barrier magnetic tunnel junctions within an approach that goes beyond the single-band transport model. We propose a ballistic multichannel electron transport model that can explain the influence of in-plane lattice strain on the tunnel magnetoresistance as well as the asymmetric voltage behavior. We consider as an example single-crystal magnetic Fe(110) electrodes for Fe/insulator/Fe and Fe/insulator/La0.67Sr0.33MnO 3 tunnel junctions, where the electronic band structures of Fe and La0.67Sr0.33MnO3 are derived by ab initio calculations. © 2013 American Physical Society.