Tunnel spin polarization of Fe/MgO/Si contacts reaching 90% with increasing MgO thickness

Abstract

Using nonlocal spin-transport devices, the tunnel spin polarization (TSP) of Fe/MgO tunnel contacts on Si is determined as a function of the thickness of the MgO. The TSP, extracted from the magnitude of the nonlocal spin-valve and Hanle signals, increases with MgO thickness and is shown to reach values of around 90% at low temperatures. Such a near-perfect spin polarization of the tunnel current indicates that symmetry-based spin filtering due to coherent tunneling occurs in Fe/MgO tunnel contacts on Si, despite the significant lattice mismatch. For MgO thicknesses below 1 nm, the TSP drops unexpectedly rapidly (to values below 25%), which is attributed to the lower crystalline quality of thin MgO layers. In fact, the data suggest that the first 0.7 nm of MgO on the Si contributes very little to the spin filtering.