Interface resistance of disordered magnetic multilayers

Abstract

We study the effect of interface disorder on the spin-dependent interface resistances of Co/Cu, Fe/Cr, and Au/Ag multilayers using a newly developed method for calculating transmission matrices from first-principles. The efficient implementation using tight-binding linear-muffin-tin orbitals allows us to model interface disorder using large lateral supercells whereby specular and diffuse scattering are treated on an equal footing. Without introducing any free parameters, quantitative agreement with experiment is obtained. We predict that disorder reduces the majority-spin interface resistance of Fe/Cr(100) multilayers by a factor 3.