Half-metallicity at the (110) interface between a full Heusler alloy and GaAs

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Kazutaka Nagao, Yoshio Miura, and Masafumi Shirai
Research Institute of Electrical Communication, Tohoku University, 2-1-1 Katahira, Aoba-ku, Sendai 980-8577, Japan

Received 12 September 2005; revised 19 January 2006; published 29 March 2006

Theelectronic properties of Co₂CrAl/GaAs interfaces are investigated by using first-principlescalculations with density functional theory. It is found that spinpolarization tends to remain relatively high at the (110) interfaceand reaches almost unity for a specific (110) interfacial structure.Furthermore, the nearly-half-metallic interface turns out to be the moststable of the (110) interfacial structures studied here. Spin polarizationcalculated only from the sp-projected density of states is alsoexamined in order to eliminate the effects stemming from thelocalized d components. The analysis shows that the high spinpolarization at the (110) interface owes little to the localizedd component and, therefore, is expected to be fairly relevantto transport properties. Co₂CrSi/GaAs, Co₂MnSi/GaAs, and Co₂MnGe/GaAs heterostructures are alsoinvestigated, and similar half-metal-like behavior at (110) interface is observedfor all of them.

URL:	http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevB.73.104447
DOI:	10.1103/PhysRevB.73.104447
PACS:	75.70.-i; 73.20.-r; 85.75.-d 75.70.-i Magnetic properties of thin films, surfaces, and interfaces 73.20.-r Electron states at surfaces and interfaces 85.75.-d Magnetoelectronics; spintronics: devices exploiting spin polarized transport or integrated magnetic fields YEAR: 2006
KEYWORDS:	gallium arsenide, III-V semiconductors, cobalt alloys, chromium alloys, aluminium alloys, silicon alloys, manganese alloys, germanium alloys, semiconductor-metal boundaries, ab initio calculations, density functional theory, electron spin polarisation, interface structure, interface states

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