Biaxial strain effect of spin dependent tunneling in MgO magnetic tunnel   junctions
  We study the effect of strain on magnetic tunnel junctions (MTJ) induced by a diamond like carbon (DLC) film. The junction resistance as well as the tunnel magnetoresistance (TMR) reduces with the DLC film. Non-equilibrium Green's function quantum transport calculations show that the application of biaxial strain increases the conductance for both the parallel and anti-parallel configurations. However, the conductance for the minority channel and for the anti-parallel configuration is significantly more sensitive to strain, which drastically increases transmission through a MgO tunnel barrier, therefore, the TMR ratio decreases with biaxial strain. 
Ajeesh M. Sahadevan, Ravi K. Tiwari, Gopinadhan Kalon, Charanjit S.   Bhatia, Mark Saeys, and Hyunsoo Yang
cond-mat.mtrl-sci cond-mat.mes-hall