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Science 15 October 1999:
Vol. 286. no. 5439, p. 373
DOI: 10.1126/science.286.5439.373c
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This Week in Science

A tunnel junction consists of two electrodes closely separated by an insulating barrier. If the two electrodes are ferromagnetic, the spin of tunneling electrons can be polarized and the tunneling rate should depend mainly on the direction of the magnetic moment in each of the ferromagnetic layers, not the choice of the insulator. De Teresa et al. (p. 507) show that this simple picture is not correct. They find varying results for different insulator materials (even reversals in the spin of the electrons that preferentially tunnel) and show that, counter-intuitively, it is the electronic density of states at the metal-oxide interface that determines how the tunnel junction operates. These results provide a new route for optimizing magnetic tunnel junctions.




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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)