Theory of digital magneto resistance in ferromagnetic resonant tunneling diodes

Abstract

We propose a ferromagnetic spintronic system, which consists of two serial connected resonant tunneling diodes. One diode is nonmagnetic whereas the other comprises a ferromagnetic emitter and quantum well. Using a selfconsistent coherent transport model we show that the current-voltage characteristic of the ferromagnetic diode can be strongly modulated by changing the relative orientation of the magnetizations in the emitter and quantum well, respectively. By a continuous change of the relative magnetization angle the total resistance exhibits a discrete jump realizing digital magneto resistance. The interplay between the emitter's Fermi energy level and the relative magnetization orientations allows to tailor the current voltage characteristics of the ferromagnetic diode from ohmic to negative differential resistance regime at low voltages.

9 pages, 8 figures

References in corpus (3)

• Theory of ferromagnetic (III,Mn)V semiconductors
• Resonant Tunneling Magneto Resistance in Coupled Quantum Wells
• Proposal for a digital converter of analog magnetic signals

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Self-sustained magnetoelectric oscillations in magnetic resonant tunneling structures
• Quantum size effects on spin-tunneling time in a magnetic resonant tunneling diode
• Optical orientation in bipolar spintronic devices
• Magnetoelectric bistabilities in ferromagnetic resonant tunneling structures
• Perspectives in spintronics: magnetic resonant tunneling, spin-orbit coupling, and GaMnAs