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Giant magnetoresistance effect in quantum nano‐scale wires
Author(s) -
Chudzinski P.,
Krompiewski S.
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
physica status solidi (b)
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.51
H-Index - 109
eISSN - 1521-3951
pISSN - 0370-1972
DOI - 10.1002/pssb.200562503
Subject(s) - condensed matter physics , giant magnetoresistance , quantum tunnelling , magnetoresistance , conductance , ferromagnetism , antiparallel (mathematics) , materials science , quantum wire , electrode , nano , magnetization , polarization (electrochemistry) , ballistic conduction , quantization (signal processing) , quantum , physics , magnetic field , chemistry , quantum mechanics , electron , computer science , computer vision , composite material
We study transport properties of nano‐scale wires connected to ferromagnetic semi‐infinite electrodes in the ballistic regime. Systems with different geometries are considered. Our method is based on recursive Green's function technique. We fully deal with atomistic structure of the whole system, treating both the nano‐wire and the electrodes on equal footing. The results include the transmission, with parallel and antiparallel magnetization in the electrodes, and giant magnetoresistance (GMR) vs. energy. The influence of the magnetic polarization, coupling between the nano‐wire and the electrodes as well as the geometry of the device on transport properties are discussed. We emphasize the shape dependent effects and take into account also imperfect structures with some atoms removed from the central region. In addition to evolution from conductance quantization to resonant tunneling regime (upon changing the hopping parameter), it has been found that with increasing polarization other features appear due to decreasing overlap between surface density of states of propagating modes. (© 2006 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)