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Temperature and bias voltage-dependent transport characteristics are presented for double magnetic tunnel junctions (DMTJs) with self-assembled NiFe nanoparticles embedded between insulating alumina barriers. The junctions with embedded nanoparticles are compared to junctions with a single barrier of comparable size and growth conditions. The embedded particles are characterized using x-ray absorption spectroscopy, transmission electron microscopy, and magnetometry techniques, showing that they are unoxidized and remain superparamagnetic to liquid helium temperatures. The tunneling magnetoresistance (TMR) for the DMTJs is lower than the control samples, however, for the DMTJs an enhancement in TMR is seen in the Coulomb blockade region. Fitting the transport data in this region supports the theory that cotunneling is the dominant electron transport process within the Coulomb blockade region, sequential tunneling being suppressed. We therefore see an enhanced TMR attributed to the change in the tunneling process due to the interplay of the Coulomb blockade and spin-dependent tunneling through superparamagnetic nanoparticles, and develop a simple model to quantify the effect, based on the fact that our nanoparticles will appear blocked when measured on femtosecond tunneling time scales.

The effect of the application of a magnetic field during deposition of epitaxial Co{sub 70}Fe{sub 30} onto GaAs(001) is shown; we find an initially counterintuitive result. For field applied along the interfacial uniaxial hard axis the relative effective uniaxial magnetic anisotropy is increased by a factor of two in comparison to both field along the uniaxial easy axis, or no field; usually, application of a deposition field results in a uniaxial easy axis parallel to this field direction. We show that the deposition field changes the maximal projection of the atomic orbital magnetic moments onto the easy axis, which corresponds to a deposition field induced shift in the Helmholtz free-energy landscape of the system.