A novel magnetic tunnel junction fabricated by robust intrinsic van der Waals half-metals

Abstract

Two-dimensional magnetic van der Waals materials (vdW) have attracted considerable attentions in recent years due to their emerging physical properties and great potential application to the spintronics devices. Magnetic tunnel junction (MTJ) is one of the most important devices in spintronics. However, many unknown mechanisms governing its critical performance remain to be elucidated. Here, based on first-principles calculations, vdW materials VBr3 and VCl3 are shown to be the robust intrinsic half-metals with spin down electron's energy gap about 3.3 eV, and the Fermi level is almost located at the center of the spin down electron's energy gap. Based on this, we predict that application of VBr3 to the magnetic electrodes of MTJ would greatly improve the off/on ratio of junction resistance. Moreover, the coercivity of magnetic electrodes used by vdW material VBr3 can be tuned by the number of layers, and an antiferromagnetic layer pinning the ferromagnetic electrode can be omission. This provides a reliable way to study and design the MTJ devices in the future.