Tunnel barriers for Fe-based spin valves providing high spin-polarized current.

Employing density functional theory for ground state quantum mechanical calculations and the non-equilibrium Green's function method for transport calculations, we investigate the potential of CdS, ZnS, CdZnS, and ZnCdS as tunnel barriers in magnetic tunnel junctions for spintronics. Based on the finding that the valence band edges of these semiconductors are dominated by p orbitals and the conduction band edges by s orbitals, we show that symmetry filtering of the Bloch states in magnetic tunnel junctions with Fe electrodes results in high tunneling magnetoresistances and high spin-polarized current (up to two orders of magnitude higher than in the case of the Fe/MgO/Fe magnetic tunnel junction).