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T. Hayashi, M. Tanaka, and A. Asamitsu
Citation: Journal of Applied Physics 87, 4673 (2000); doi: 10.1063/1.373126
View online: http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.373126
View Table of Contents: http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/journal/jap/87/9?ver=pdfcov
Published by the AIP Publishing
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1 MAY 2000
A. Asamitsu
Cryogenic Center, The University of Tokyo, 2-11-16 Yayoi, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-8656, Japan
I. INTRODUCTION
0021-8979/2000/87(9)/4673/3/$17.00
4673
2000 American Institute of Physics
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FIG. 1. a Valence band profile of the GaMnAs-based double barrier heterostructure. b Transmission probability for heavy holes m hh0.45m 0 for
GaMnAs and 0.75m 0 for AlAs, respectively. c Transmission probability
for light holes m lh0.08m 0 for GaMnAs and 0.143m 0 for AlAs, respectively.
cos
i i1
sin
i1
,
2
2
sin
i i1
cos
i1
,
2
2
and similarly for the derivatives, where i is the wave function of ith region with the spin of .
Figures 1b and 1c show the energy dependence of
transmission probability TT * (E z ) from one majority spin
band to the other majority spin band in such magnetic resonant tunneling structures. Figures 1b and 1c correspond to
heavy holes (m hh0.45m 0 ) and light holes (m lh0.08m 0 ),
respectively. The peak energies shift in both cases, depending on the magnetization direction of the magnetic QW. This
fact indicates that a magnetic QW works as a very sharp spin
filter as well as an energy filter, leading to the enhancement
and unique bias dependence of TMR.
III. TUNNELING MAGNETORESISTANCE OF A
MAGNETIC RESONANT TUNNELING DIODE
photolithographic techniques. Their I V and dI/dV characteristics and TMR were measured at 4.2 K in CPP current
perpendicular to the plane configuration, applying an inplane magnetic field. At the same time, we also performed
magnetotransport measurements on the Hall bar of the same
sample in CIP current in-plane configuration, applying an
in-plane magnetic field.
Figure 2 shows magnetic field dependence of tunneling
resistance measured at nearly zero bias at 4.2 K by using the
conventional lock-in technique. The modulation amplitude is
1 mV 42 Hz. Very large negative TMR was observed up to
high field. The TMR ratio, defined by (R maxRmin)/Rmin , is
about 170%, which is much higher than the CIP-MR ratio
about 10% of the same sample, where R min is the resistance
at 11.1 kOe. Note here that the resistance of GaMnAs electrodes is much smaller than the total tunneling resistance,
therefore, the MR of the GaMnAs electrodes hardly contributes to the observed TMR effect.6 A clear hysteresis behavior appeared at low field, as shown in the inset of Fig. 2,
which is caused by the different magnetization configuration
of the ferromagnetic GaMnAs layers.
Although the magnetization of these three GaMnAs layers is almost saturated at 5001000 Oe, negative TMR continued to be observed up to higher field. The TMR effect at
high field is much larger than that at low field, similar to the
CIP-MR of GaMnAs single layers. The present TMR behavior observed in the GaMnAs-based heterostructures can be
explained in the following way. The ferromagnetic ordering
between Mn spins in GaMnAs is induced by itinerate holes
through p-d exchange interaction. That is to say, itinerate
holes drag magnetic clouds of Mn spins along with them.
Therefore, with a magnetic field larger, in case of tunneling
process, the penetration length of hole wave functions into
the tunnel barriers becomes larger due to the restoration of
the kinetic energy of conducting holes. In other words, the
transmission probability becomes exponentially larger with
increasing the magnetic field, leading to the giant negative
TMR up to high field.
Negative differential resistance NDR was not observed
in the I V characteristic although the shape of the derivative
dI/dV-V not shown here looked wavy. In order to make
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FIG. 3. d 2 I/dV 2 -V curves of the GaMnAs/AlAs double barrier tunnel junction at two different magnetic fields. The inset shows the I V characteristics.
the wavy character clear, its d 2 I/dV 2 -V curves at two different magnetic fields 22 kOe and 120 Oe are presented in
Fig. 3. At high field 22 kOe, where the magnetization directions of all three GaMnAs layers are aligned parallel to
the applied magnetic field direction, a large peak appeared at
about 0.5 V and a few tiny shoulders were observed at
smaller voltages 25 and 250 mV. On the other hand, at low
field 122 Oe, which corresponds to the magnetic field for
the peak tunneling resistance, a new peak appeared at around
1.35 V, while the whole spectrum shifted toward higher voltage and becomes a little smaller. Apparently, this spectrum
shift accounts for the observed very large TMR effect.
The resonant tunneling of holes in high quality nonmagnetic AlAsGaAsAlAs heterostructures was reported by
Mendez et al.14 Although one should expect to see peaks
associated with GaAs heavy and light hole virtual bound
states, the experimentally observed peaks in the current
voltage characteristics did not fit these assumptions, reflecting the complicated valence-band states. For the same reason, the quantitative discrepancy between the calculation and
the experiment in our system is probably very large. In addition, some irreducible depletion layers, which prohibit net
bias voltage from being applied over the AlAs double barriers, can exist in this two-terminal device, making the resonant tunneling voltage higher. Considering all described
above, the new additional peak at 1.35 V measured at 120
Oe in Fig. 3 probably indicates a sign of spin-dependent
resonant tunneling of holes through the subbands in the magnetic quantum well.
Clear NDR would enhance the TMR effect much more.
Some experimental factors may make it difficult to obtain
NDR in our sample. One reason is phase and spin decoherence of the tunneling holes due to impurity scattering especially, Mn magnetic impurities in the AlAs barriers and interface roughness because the present double barrier
heterostructure contains GaMnAs which is a very heavily
doped semiconductor and needs to be grown at low temperature. Another possible reason is that the Fermi energy of
The authors wish to thank Dr. H. Shimada for collaboration, and Professor T. Nishinaga for encouragement. This
work is partially supported by JSPS Research for the Future
Program JSPS-RFTF97P00202 and Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research Spin-Controlled Semiconductor Nanostructures No. 09244105 provided by the Ministry of Education, Science, Sport and Culture, Japan.
1
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