Study of Tunnel Magneto Resistance in Zinc Doped Fe|MgO|Fe Sandwiches.

We report the transport characteristics of Fe(100)|Mg_1-XZn_XO(100)|Fe(100), a magnetic tunnel junction (MTJ), calculated using the ab-initio density functional theory, Landauer formalism and non-equilibrium Green’s function (NEGF) techniques. A monolayer of ZnO, inserted at the middle of four layers of rock-salt MgO (100) planes is found to enhance the tunneling magneto resistance of the MTJ device by approximately 250% as compared to that observed in pure MgO based devices. Our calculated I-V characteristics are presented in the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]