Influence of Interfaces on Giant Magnetoresistance in Magnetic Sandwiches

Abstract

Since the discovery of the giant magnetoresistance (GMR) in Fe/Cr multilayers [1,2] and observation of this effect in many structures (multi-layers or sandwiches F/P/F, where F and P indicate ferromagnetic layer and non-magnetic spacer respectively) [3] the problem of relative importance of spin-dependent electron’s scattering in the bulk or at interfaces is widely discussed. We present the quantum statistical theory of GMR for both CIP and CPP geometries in the sandwich structure F a /P b /F c consisting of two ferromagnetic films, separated by metallic paramagnetic spacer with interfaces on the boundaries. For calculation of the conductivity of the system we used Kubo formalism and Green functions method.