Circuit model for spin-bottleneck resistance in magnetic-tunnel-junction devices

Spin-bottlenecks are created in magnetic-tunnel-junction devices by spatial inhomogeneity in the relative resistances for up and down spins. We propose a simple electrical circuit model for these devices which incorporates spin-bottleneck effects and can be used to calculate their overall resistance and magnetoresistance. The model permits a simple understanding of the dependence of device magnetoresistance on spin diffusion lengths, tunneling magnetoresistance, and majority and minority spin resistivities in the ferromagnetic electrodes. The circuit model is in a good quantitative agreement with detailed transport calculations.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev.

Calculus on surfaces with general closest point functions

The Closest Point Method for solving partial differential equations (PDEs) posed on surfaces was recently introduced by Ruuth and Merriman [J. Comput. Phys. 2008] and successfully applied to a variety of surface PDEs. In this paper we study the theoretical foundations of this method. The main idea is that surface differentials of a surface function can be replaced with Cartesian differentials of its closest point extension, i.e., its composition with a closest point function. We introduce a general class of these closest point functions (a subset of differentiable retractions), show that these are exactly the functions necessary to satisfy the above idea, and give a geometric characterization this class. Finally, we construct some closest point functions and demonstrate their effectiveness numerically on surface PDEs

Imaging interstitial iron concentrations in boron-doped crystalline silicon using photoluminescence

Imaging the band-to-band photoluminescence of silicon wafers is known to provide rapid and high-resolution images of the carrier lifetime. Here, we show that such photoluminescence images, taken before and after dissociation of iron-boron pairs, allow an accurate image of the interstitial iron concentration across a boron-doped p-type silicon wafer to be generated. Such iron images can be obtained more rapidly than with existing point-by-point iron mapping techniques. However, because the technique is best used at moderate illumination intensities, it is important to adopt a generalized analysis that takes account of different injection levels across a wafer. The technique has been verified via measurement of a deliberately contaminated single-crystal silicon wafer with a range of known iron concentrations. It has also been applied to directionally solidified ingot-grown multicrystalline silicon wafers made for solar cell production, which contain a detectible amount of unwanted iron. The iron images on these wafers reveal internal gettering of iron to grain boundaries and dislocated regions during ingot growth.D.M. is supported by an Australian Research Council QEII Fellowship. The Centre of Excellence for Advanced Silicon Photovoltaics and Photonics at UNSW is funded by the Australian Research Council

Magnetic domains in III-V magnetic semiconductors

Recent progress in theoretical understanding of magnetic anisotropy and stiffness in III-V magnetic semiconductors is exploited for predictions of magnetic domain characteristics and methods of their tuning. We evaluate the width and the energy of domain walls as well as the period of stripe domains in perpendicular films. The computed stripe width d = 1.1 um for Ga_0.957Mn_0.043As/In_0.16Ga_0.84As compares favorably to the experimental value 1.5 um, as determined by Shono et al. [Appl. Phys. Lett. 77, 1363 (2000)].Comment: 4 RevTex pages, 2 figures spelling of author's names corrected in abstract pag

Magnetic interactions of substitutional Mn pairs in GaAs

We employ a kinetic-exchange tight-binding model to calculate the magnetic interaction and anisotropy energies of a pair of substitutional Mn atoms in GaAs as a function of their separation distance and direction. We find that the most energetically stable configuration is usually one in which the spins are ferromagnetically aligned along the vector connecting the Mn atoms. The ferromagnetic configuration is characterized by a splitting of the topmost unoccupied acceptor levels, which is visible in scanning tunneling microscope studies when the pair is close to the surface and is strongly dependent on pair orientation. The largest acceptor splittings occur when the Mn pair is oriented along the symmetry direction, and the smallest when they are oriented along . We show explicitly that the acceptor splitting is not simply related to the effective exchange interaction between the Mn local moments. The exchange interaction constant is instead more directly related to the width of the distribution of all impurity levels -- occupied and unoccupied. When the Mn pair is at the (110) GaAs surface, both acceptor splitting and effective exchange interaction are very small except for the smallest possible Mn separation.Comment: 25 figure