Above room temperature multiferroic tunnel junction with the altermagnetic metal CrSb

Abstract

Altermagnets with nonrelativistic momentum-dependent spin splitting and compensated net magnetic moments have recently garnered significant interest in spintronics, particularly as pinning layers in magnetic tunnel junctions (MTJs). However, room temperature (RT) altermagnet-based MTJs with tunable tunneling magnetoresistance (TMR) or electroresistance (TER) modulated by multiferroicity remain largely unexplored. Here, we propose an experimentally fabricable above-RT multiferroic MTJ, comprising an altermagnetic metal, ferroelectric barrier, and ferromagnetic metal-epitomized by a CrSb/In2Se3/Fe3GaTe2 heterostructure. Our calculations with first-principles and nonequilibrium Green function method indicate that the architecture enables magnetically switchable TER, electrically tunable TMR, and dual-mode controllable spin filtering. To disentangle the roles of ferroelectricity and the tunnel barrier, nonferroelectric Sb2Se3 and a vacuum gap are exploited as control cases. Remarkably, the system achieves TMR up to 2308%, TER of 707%, and near-perfect spin filtering efficiency. Both TMR and TER are considerable for CrSb/In2Se3/Fe3GaTe2 with either Cr or Sb interface. The transport performance is robust under bias voltage. These findings demonstrate the above-RT multiferroic altermagnet-based MTJs and highlight their exciting potential as a versatile platform for next-generation spin dynamics, magnetic sensing, and quantum logic nanodevices.