Tunneling magnetoresistance of a GaMnAs-based double barrier ferromagnetic tunnel junction

Introduction of a ferromagnetic quantum well in a ferromagnetic tunnel junction is shown to greatly enhance the tunneling magnetoresistance (TMR) effect, due to spin filtering as well as energy filtering. We have theoretically analyzed resonant transmission probability of a magnetic double barrier heterostructure consisting of III-V based ferromagnetic semiconductor GaMnAs, and nonmagnetic semiconductor AlAs. Experimentally, we have observed very large TMR effect of such a system grown by low-temperature molecular-beam epitaxy, and have shown that some of the measured tunneling features are attributed to spin-dependent resonant tunneling. (C) 2000 American Institute of Physics. [S0021-8979(00)52808-4].