Experimental investigations of SiO2 based ferrite magnetic tunnel junction

• CoFe2O4/SiO2/Co–NiFe2O4 magnetic junction was fabricated using RF/DC sputtering.
• Spin transport through nanostructure silicon oxide with ferrite as free and pinned layer is our first report.
• Magnetization studies were done to justify the free layer and pinned layer for our multilayer.
• Magnetoresistance behavior shows a sharp discriminating between parallel and antiparallel alignment with TMR value of 16%.

We report experimental results of ferrite based magnetic tunnel junction. Ferrite junction and spin transport through SiO2 were interesting since they can readily replace the conventional electronics. We fabricated a cobalt ferrite/SiO2/cobalt nickel ferrite based magnetic tunnel junction over a copper coated n-silicon substrate using a RF/DC magnetron sputtering. The tunneling magnetoresistance shows a very good response to applied field and we achieved a TMR of about 16%. Although theoretically it was predicted infinite TMR for half metallic ferromagnetic junction, the deviation was explained on the basis of incoherent scattering along the interfaces.