Semi-epitaxial magnetic tunnel transistor: Effect of electron energy and temperature

Abstract

A magnetic tunnel transistor with spin-valve metallic base and epitaxial Schottky barrier is used to probe the temperature and energy dependence of the magnetocurrent. The magnetocurrent ratio (MCR) reaches values up to 900% in our ultrathin microstructured three-terminal devices. The effect of hot-electron energy has been studied in the range of 0.6 to 2.2 eV. We observe a clear maximum of the MCR at about 1.5 eV electron energy. With increasing temperature (5K<T<185K) the MC remains almost constant, but a rapidly growing spin-independent additional current is measured, due to increasing collector leakage.