Anti‐Ferromagnet Controlled Tunneling Magnetoresistance

The requirement for high‐density memory integration advances the development of newly structured spintronic devices, which have reduced stray fields and are insensitive to magnetic field perturbations. This could be visualized in magnetic tunnel junctions incorporating anti‐ferromagnetic instead of ferromagnetic electrodes. Here, room‐temperature anti‐ferromangnet (AFM)‐controlled tunneling anisotropic magnetoresistance in a novel perpendicular junction is reported, where the IrMn AFM stays immediately at both sides of AlO_x tunnel barrier as the functional layers. Bi‐stable resistance states governed by the relative arrangement of uncompensated anti‐ferromagnetic IrMn moments are obtained here, rather than the traditional spin‐valve signal observed in ferromagnet‐based tunnel junctions. The experimental observation of room‐temperature tunneling magnetoresistance controlled directly by AFM is practically significant and may pave the way for new‐generation memories based on AFM spintronics.