Finite Element Modeling of Charge and Spin-currents in Magnetoresistive Pillars with Current Crowding Effects

TL;DR

This paper presents a finite element model for charge and spin currents in magnetoresistive pillars, highlighting the impact of current crowding effects on spin-dependent transport in complex geometries.

Contribution

It introduces a numerical finite element approach to simulate charge and spin diffusion with spin-flip and torque in non-collinear geometries, addressing current crowding effects.

Findings

Current crowding significantly affects spin current distribution.

Finite element modeling captures complex geometrical effects on transport.

Spin-dependent transport is sensitive to boundary conditions and geometry.

Abstract

The charge and spin diffusion equations taking into account spin-flip and spin-transfer torque were numerically solved using a finite element method in complex non-collinear geometry. This approach was used to study the spin-dependent transport in giant magnetoresistance metallic pillars sandwiched between extended electrodes as in magnetoresistive heads for hard disk drives. The charge current crowding around the boundaries between the electrodes and the pillar has a quite significant influence on the spin current.