Tunneling magnetoresistance induced by controllable formation of Co filaments in resistive switching Co/ZnO/Fe structures

Zhihuan Yang, Qingfeng Zhan, Xiaojian Zhu, Yiwei Liu, Huali Yang, Benlin Hu, Jie Shang, Liang Pan, Bin Chen, Run Wei Li

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27 Scopus citations

Abstract

We demonstrated that the formation of magnetic conductive filaments in Co/ZnO/Fe sandwich structures can be employed to produce a nanoscale magnetic tunnel junction (MTJ) and control the tunneling magnetoresistance (TMR). The pristine Co/ZnO/Fe structures with a 100nm thick ZnO layer do not exhibit any remarkable TMR. Under voltage sweeps performed on the sandwich devices, Co conductive filaments were grown in a ZnO layer, which leads to the formation of nanoscale Co/ZnO/Fe MTJs and the occurrence of TMR. In addition, a sign inversion of TMR was found in the nano-MTJs by carrying out the further voltage sweeps or varying the measuring bias voltage, which could be well understood in terms of the resonant tunneling caused by impurity scattering in a ZnO barrier.

Original languageEnglish
Article number58004
JournalEurophysics Letters
Volume108
Issue number5
DOIs
StatePublished - 1 Dec 2014
Externally publishedYes

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