First principle calculation of potential and multi-channel transport in Fe/MgO/Fe hetero-junction

Abstract

In this work we studied the behavior of multi-channel tunneling through a realistic Fe/MgO/Fe hetero-junction ab initio potential. For this purpose we obtained Fe/MgO/Fe(001) hetero-junction effective potentials using the full potential-linear augmented plane wave WIEN2k code together with the generalized gradient approximation for the exchange-correlation potential. Multi-channel tunneling through the Fe/MgO/Fe hetero-junction barrier was studied within a few modes model. The transfer matrix technique was used to calculate the transmission and reflection amplitudes between Bloch states in the semi-infinite leads. The transmission coefficients were used in Fisher and Lee formula for conductance, an expression derived from Kubo formula and valid for any number of scattering channels.