Structural and electronic properties ofCo/Al2O3/Comagnetic tunnel junction from first principles

Abstract

A detailed first-principles study of the atomic and electronic structure of the $\mathrm{Co}/{\mathrm{Al}}_{2}{\mathrm{O}}_{3}/\mathrm{Co}$ magnetic tunnel junction has been performed in order to elucidate the key features determining the spin-dependent tunneling. The atomic structure of the multilayer with the O- and Al-terminated interfaces between fcc Co(111) and crystalline $\ensuremath{\alpha}$-${\mathrm{Al}}_{2}{\mathrm{O}}_{3}(0001)$ has been optimized using self-consistent spin-polarized calculations within density-functional theory and the generalized gradient approximation. We found that the relaxed atomic structure of the O-terminated interface is characterized by a rippling of the Co interfacial plane, the average Co-O bond length being 2.04 \AA{} which is within 5% of that in bulk CoO. The corresponding electronic structure is influenced by the covalent bonding between the O $2p$ and Co $3d$ orbitals resulting in exchange-split bonding and antibonding states and an induced magnetic moment of 0.07${\ensuremath{\mu}}_{B}$ on the interfacial oxygen atoms. The Al-terminated interface contains Co-Al bonds with an average bond length of 2.49 \AA{} compared to 2.48 \AA{} in bulk CoAl. Due to charge transfer and screening effects the Co interfacial layer acquires a negative charge which results in a reduced magnetic moment of $1.15{\ensuremath{\mu}}_{B}$ per Co atom. We found that the electronic structure of the O-terminated $\mathrm{Co}/{\mathrm{Al}}_{2}{\mathrm{O}}_{3}/\mathrm{Co}$ tunnel junction exhibits negative spin polarization at the Fermi energy within the first few monolayers of alumina but it eventually becomes positive for distances beyond 10 \AA{}.