Sixteen resistive states of a tunnel junction with a composite barrier

A new model for a tunnel junction with a ferroelectric-ferromagnetic-ferroelectric composite barrier and two magnetic electrodes is evaluated. By reversing the electric polarisation in the ferroelectric layers and the magnetisation in the electrodes independently or simultaneously, sixteen distinct resistive states are obtained successfully. The tunnelling electroresistance ratio, the spin-filtering ratio and the conductance as functions of the barrier thickness, the exchange splitting and the electric polarisation are also investigated in detail. Compared with conventional tunnel junctions, our theoretical model presents more resistive states that potentially may lead to a tremendous increase in multivalue logic state storage in next generation memory cells