Use of magnetocrystalline anisotropy in spin-dependent tunneling

Epitaxial growth techniques are used to impose in-plane magnetocrystalline anisotropy on a spin-polarized tunneling configuration. A Cu(100) buffer layer grown on a Si(100) substrate stabilizes epitaxial face-centered-cubic cobalt as one of the ferromagnetic electrodes. The negative magnetocrystalline constant of this metastable phase favors easy axes along Co < 110 > and, due to the single crystal nature of this layer, the coercivity is more than an order of magnitude larger than in the polycrystalline layers which form the second electrode. Our approach provides a way to access the high degree of spin polarization characteristic of the 3d transition metals. (C) 1999 American Institute of Physics. [S0003-6951(99)00139-4].