Spin injection in a ferromagnet/resonant tunneling diode heterostructure

Abstract

The spin transport property of a ferromagnet (FM)/insulator (I)/resonant tunneling diode (RTD) heterostructure was studied. The transmission coefficient and spin polarization in a multilayered heterostructure was calculated by a Schrödinger wave equation. An Airy function formalism approach was used to solve this equation. Based on the transfer matrix approach, the transmittivity of the structure was determined as a function of the Feimi energy and other parameters. The result shows that the spin polarization induced by the structure oscillates with the increasing Fermi energy of the FM layer. While the thickness of the RTD is reduced, the resonant peaks become broad. In the heterostructure, the spin polarization reaches as high as 40% and can be easily controlled by the external bias voltage.