CoFe alloy as middle layer for strong spin dependent quantum well resonant tunneling in double barrier magnetic tunnel juncti...

We report the spin-dependent quantum well resonant tunneling effect in CoFe/MgO/CoFe/MgO/CoFeB (CoFe) double barrier magnetic tunnel junctions. The dI/dV spectra reveal clear resonant peaks for the parallel magnetization configurations, which can be matched to quantum well resonances obtained from calculation. The differential TMR exhibits an oscillatory behavior with a sign change due to the formation of the spin-dependent QW states in the middle CoFe layer. Also, we observe pronounced TMR enhancement at resonant voltages at room temperature, suggesting that it is very promising to achieve high TMR using the spin-dependent QW resonant tunneling effect.