Transport and Magneto-Transport Characteristics of Fe$_{3}$O$_{4}$/GaAs Hybrid Structure

Abstract

We have investigated the transport and magneto-transport characteristics of magnetite (Fe <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">3</sub> O <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">4</sub> ) thin films deposited on top of GaAs (100). The magnetoresistance has been measured in both the longitudinal and the transverse directions, and the results show that magnetoresistance of the thin Fe <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">3</sub> O <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">4</sub> films is due to anisotropic magnetoresistance (AMR) and there is no evidence of anti-phase boundaries from the magnetoresistance measurements. The current-voltage (I-V) characteristics across the interface have been measured to explore the nature of the magnetite/GaAs contact, and the results show typical characteristics of Schottky barrier contact with a moderate barrier height of 0.34 eV, which might favour high efficient spin injection from the half metallic magnetite into GaAs for spintronic applications