Three-dimensional extended Huckel theory-nonequilibrium Green's function spin polarized transport model for Fe/MgO/Fe heterostructures

Although the theory of tunnel magnetoresistance (TMR) in Fe/MgO/Fe heterostructures is well known, there is a discrepancy between the values predicted by ab initio calculations with a band gap of 5.2 eV and the ones predicted by other methods, e. g., empirical tight-binding with a band gap of 7.6 eV. To our knowledge, no one has yet used the same theory to explore the reasons behind this discrepancy. In this work, we report a three-dimensional atomistic nonequilibrium Green's function transport model with two set of transferable extended Huckel theory parameters for MgO; one with the experimental band gap of 7.8 eV and the other with the local density approximation of the density functional theory band gap of 5.2 eV. To capture the symmetry filtering property of MgO, we parameterize using the k-resolved orbital projected density of states as the benchmark. We show that the band gap has a significant effect on the barrier width dependence and the bias dependence of the transport quantities. By using the experimental band gap, the TMR is much smaller than the one observed with a band gap of 5.2 eV. (C) 2011 American Institute of Physics. [doi: 10.1063/1.3525703]