Thus, investigating this issue may help us better understand the physics involved and achieve a higher MR ratio at higher temperature for practical applications. In this work, we studied a large number of Co/ZnO films deposited at different sputtering pressures with different ZnO thicknesses and found that the MR effect is strongly dependent on the resistivity of films. We further investigated the charge transport in these films and found that conduction can be separated into three regimes, namely metallic, tunneling, and hopping regimes, with different temperature dependence.

We found that among the three regimes, only the tunneling part is strongly spin dependent. This leads to a broad maximum Anlotinib of MR in the tunneling regime. This finding is useful in the tuning of MR values and in understanding its mechanism. Methods Co/ZnO films selleck screening library were deposited by sequentially sputtering ultrathin Co layers and ZnO layers on glass substrates at RT. Direct-current and radio-frequency powers were applied to Co and ZnO targets, respectively. The sputtering chamber pressure

was reduced to 8 × 10−5 Pa before deposition. The sputtering gas was an Ar atmosphere with a range of 0.4 to 0.8 Pa. The film nominal structure is [Co (0.6)/ZnO (x)]60 (denoted as Co/ZnO; thicknesses in nanometers), where x = 0.3 to 2.5 nm is the thickness of the ZnO layer. The details of the growth have been described in a previous publication [11]. The thickness of the films was measured by a surface profiler. The structures of the films were analyzed using X-ray diffraction (XRD). The magnetic properties of the films were measured using a superconducting quantum GS-4997 research buy interference device magnetometer with a magnetic field applied parallel to eltoprazine the film plane. The magnetic field dependence of MR was measured using a conventional four-probe method in the maximum applied magnetic field of 20 kOe with current in the plane at RT. The temperature dependence of resistance was measured by four-point geometry from 5 to 300 K. Results and discussion The key result of our work is presented in Figure 1, which clearly shows that the RT MR is strongly correlated with resistivity

and therefore the transport behavior of Co/ZnO films. We found that the reproducibility of the films was very good and that there is no clear correlation between the ZnO thickness, the chamber sputtering pressure, and the values of MR. However, a clear pattern emerges when MR is plotted against the resistivity of the films. From Figure 1, the MR values are evidently larger than 8.1% in the intermediate regime (tunneling regime) with 0.08 Ω · cm < ρ < 0.5 Ω · cm, but they decrease markedly in the left and right regimes (metallic and hopping regimes). In the metallic regime, the MR effect becomes weaker with decreasing resistivity and finally trends toward zero as the resistivity decreases to approximately 0.004 Ω · cm. The MR also decreases with increasing resistivity in the hopping regime and retains at 3.