Giant tunneling magnetoresistance in silicene

Abstract

We have theoretically studied ballistic electron transport in silicene under the manipulation of a pair of ferromagnetic gate. Transport properties like transmission and conductance have been calculated by the standard transfer matrix method for parallel and antiparallel magnetization configurations. It is demonstrated here that, due to the stray field-induced wave-vector filtering effect, remarkable difference in configuration-dependent transport gives rise to a giant tunneling magnetoresistance. In combination with the peculiar buckled structure of silicene and its electric tunable energy gap, the receiving magnetoresistance can be efficiently modulated by the externally-tunable stray field, electrostatic potential, and staggered sublattice potential, providing some flexible strategies to construct silicene-based nanoelectronic device. © 2013 AIP Publishing LLC.