Impact of lattice strain on the tunnel magneto-resistance in Fe/Insulator/Fe and Fe/Insulator/La$_{0.67}$Sr$_{0.33}$MnO$_{3}$ magnetic tunnel junctions

Abstract

The objective of this work is to describe the tunnel electron current in single barrier magnetic tunnel junctions within a new approach that goes beyond the single-band transport model. We propose a ballistic multi-channel electron transport model that can explain the influence of in-plane lattice strain on the tunnel magnetoresistance as well as the asymmetric voltage behavior. We consider as an example single crystal magnetic Fe(110) electrodes for Fe/Insulator/Fe and Fe/Insulator/La$_{0.67}$Sr$_{0.33}$MnO$_{3}$ tunnel junctions, where the electronic band structures of Fe and La$_{0.67}$Sr$_{0.33}$MnO$_{3}$ are derived by \it{ab-initio} calculations.