Spin-polarized tunneling in an electromagnetic structure

We have shown that highly spin-polarized electrons can be obtained through the resonant tunneling of electromagnetic structure, which consists of triple-magnetic barriers and correspondingly designed electrostatic potential distributions. The spin dependence of the tunneling comes from the Zeeman term and thus is expected to be better observed in materials with higher g* and m*. The huge difference between spin-up and spin-down electrons in the characteristics of transmission probability is found. The proposed structure is expected to be utilized as spin-switching device as well as spin-filtering device. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.