Tunneling Spectroscopy of Magnetic Double Barrier Junctions

摘要

Scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) is used to study transport in magnetic double tunnel junctions (DTJs) formed using a fixed transparency barrier of a patterned tunnel junction (TJ), and a variable tunnel barrier between the top electrode of the patterned junction and the STM tip. A sufficiently thin top electrode has been predicted to result in a rectification of charge current through a DTJ when the two barriers have different transparency. Our measurements indeed show a high current rectification ratio for 3-nm-thick, continuous film top electrodes, which is observed for junctions with asymmetric tunnel barriers