Magnetoresistance and spin-transfer torque in magnetic tunnel junctions

We comment on both recent progress and lingering puzzles related to research on magnetic tunnel junctions (MTJs). MTJs are already being used in applications such as magnetic-field sensors in the read heads of disk drives, and they may also be the first device geometry in which spin-torque effects are applied to manipulate magnetic dynamics, in order to make non-volatile magnetic random access memory. However, there remain many unanswered questions about such basic properties as the magnetoresistance of MTJs, how their properties change as a function of tunnel-barrier thickness and applied bias, and what are the magnitude and direction of the spin-transfer-torque vector induced by a tunnel current.

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