New materials research for high spin polarized current

The author reports here a thorough investigation of structural and magnetic properties of Co2FeAl0.5Si0.5 Heusler alloy films, and the tunnel magnetoresistance effect for junctions with Co2FeAl0.5Si0.5 electrodes, spin injection into GaAs semiconductor from Co2FeAl0.5Si0.5, and spin filtering phenomena for junctions with CoFe2O4 ferrite barrier. It was observed that tunnel magnetoresistance ratio up to 832%(386%) at 9 K (room temperature), which corresponds to the tunnel spin polarization of 0.90 (0.81) for the junctions using Co2FeAl0.5Si0.5 Heusler electrodes by optimizing the fabrication condition. It was also found that the tunnel magnetoresistance ratio are almost the same between the junctions with Co2FeAl0.5Si0.5 Heusler electrodes on Cr buffered (1 0 0) and (1 1 0) MgO substrates, which indicates that tunnel spin polarization of Co2FeAl0.5Si0.5 for these two direction are almost the same. The next part of this paper is a spin filtering effect using a Co ferrite. The spin filtering effect was observed through a thin Co-ferrite barrier. The inverse type tunnel magnetoresistance ratio of -124% measured at 10 K was obtained. The inverse type magnetoresistance suggests the negative spin polarization of Co-ferrite barrier. The magnetoresistance ratio of -124% corresponds to the spin polarization of -0.77 by the Co-ferrite barrier. The last part is devoted to the spin injection from Co2FeAl0.5Si0.5 into GaAs. The spin injection signal was clearly obtained by three terminal Hanle measurement. The spin relaxation time was estimated to be 380 ps measured at 5 K. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.