Mechanism for the magnetoresistance of Pure Bulk Ferromagnets and Composite Thin Film Structures

Abstract

ABSTRACTA unified explanation is given of the long-standing question of the origin of the low-field magnetoresistance, MR, behavior in pure ferromagnetics and the large magnetoresistance effects seen in magnetic layered and granular structures. It is shown that the main contributions to these effects are due to the scattering that occurs at the magnetic boundaries between non-aligned magnetic regions. This scattering occurs because the predominant conduction electrons in 3d ferromagnetics are the highly polarized itinerant d electrons. As a result of this polarization the Majority-band d electrons are strongly reflected at an antiparallel magnetic boundary due to a lack of available states for occupancy. The traversing electrons are further scattered as they cross the boundary due to a discontinuity in the potential caused by the interchange of their kinetic and exchange energies at the boundary. Expressions for the magnetoresistance due to these scattering mechanisms are derived and shown to describe very well the wide variety of magnetoresistance values and other features found in the literature for both pure Fe and nano-structures of Fe or Co with non-Magnetic Materials. The MR Magnitude is seen to vary inversely with the domain size. Thus the domain size and sample purity are seen to be the main factors that determine the magnitude of the MR effect in pure ferromagnets. The large MR values seen in layered and granular magnetic structures arise from the small effective domain size attainable in these structures. This is achieved by introducing a non-Magnetic Material into these structures which allows the effective domain size to be decreased from the micron range of the pure ferromagnetic elements into the nanometer range.