Biaxial strain effect of spin dependent tunneling in MgO magnetic tunnel junctions

We study the effect of strain on magnetic tunnel junctions induced by a diamond like carbon (DLC) film. The junction resistance as well as the tunnel magnetoresistance (TMR) reduces with the DLC film. Non-equilibrium Green's function quantum transport calculations show that the application of biaxial strain increases the conductance for both the parallel and anti-parallel configurations. However, the conductance for the minority channel and for the anti-parallel configuration is significantly more sensitive to strain, which drastically increases transmission through a MgO tunnel barrier, therefore, the TMR ratio decreases with biaxial strain. (C) 2012 American Institute of Physics. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4738787]