Anisotropic magnetoresistance and current-perpendicular-to-plane giant magnetoresistance in epitaxial NiMnSb-based multilayers

Abstract

We fabricated (001)-oriented C1b-NiMnSb epitaxial films on MgO substrate by a magnetron sputtering system and systematically investigated the structure, magnetic property, and anisotropic magnetoresistance (AMR) effect. NiMnSb film was deposited using a stoichiometric NiMnSb target which has Mn-deficient (Mn ∼ 28.7 at. %) off-stoichiometric composition ratio. We have investigated bulk spin-polarization in NiMnSb films by measuring AMR on the basis of recent study for half-metallic L21-Heusler compounds. Although the negative sign of AMR ratio, which is indicative of half-metallic nature, was observed in the single layer NiMnSb films, the magnitude of AMR ratio (−0.10% at RT) was about half of the largest value reported for half-metallic L21-Heusler compounds. The current-perpendicular-to-plane (CPP) giant magnetoresistance (GMR) devices of NiMnSb/Ag/NiMnSb show MR ratio of 13.2% at 10 K and 4.2% at 300 K, which is higher than the previous result for NiMnSb/Cu/NiMnSb CPP-GMR devices [Caballero et al., J. Magn. Magn. Mater. 198–199, 55 (1999)], but much less than the CPP-GMR using L21-Heusler electrodes. The reduction of intrinsic bulk spin-polarization originating from the Mn-deficiency in NiMnSb layer is expected to be the main reason for small MR values.