Half-metallic transport and spin-polarized tunneling through the van der Waals ferromagnet Fe${_4}$GeTe$_{2}$

Autor: Halder, Anita, Nell, Declan, Sihi, Antik, Bajaj, Akash, Sanvito, Stefano, Droghetti, Andrea
Rok vydání: 2024
Předmět:
Druh dokumentu: Working Paper
Popis: The recent emergence of van der Waals (vdW) ferromagnets has opened new opportunities for designing spintronic devices. We theoretically investigate the coherent spin-dependent transport properties of the vdW ferromagnet Fe$_4$GeTe$_2$, by using density functional theory combined with the non-equilibrium Green's functions method. We find that the conductance in the direction perpendicular to the layers is half-metallic, namely it is entirely spin-polarized, as a result of the material's electronic structure. This characteristic persists from bulk to single layer, even under significant bias voltages, and it is little affected by spin-orbit coupling and electron correlation. Motivated by this observation, we then investigate the tunnel magnetoresistance (TMR) effect in an magnetic tunnel junction, which comprises two Fe$_4$GeTe$_2$ layers separated by the vdW gap acting as insulating barrier. We predict a TMR ratio of almost 500\%, which can be further boosted by increasing the number of Fe$_4$GeTe$_2$ layers in the junction.
Comment: 16 pages, 15 figures and 4 tables
Databáze: arXiv