Atomic mechanism for giant magnetoresistance in layered CrFe

Electrical resistivity due to spin-selective scattering by displaced interface atoms has been computed for a layered CrFe superlattice, using full-potential multiple scattering theory with no free parameters. Consistent with earlier calculations on layered CuCo, magnetoresistance due to this scattering mechanism is found to be very large. For parallel layer magnetizations, the electronic current is predicted to be spin-polarized in the minority spin sense in CrFe, opposite to the predicted spin sense in CuCo.