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.