Magnetoresistance in Fe/ZnSe/Fe planar junctions

We report on the magnetoresistance measurements in Fe/ZnSe/Fe planar juncti ons. Fe/ZnSe/Fe structures were successfully grown by molecular beam epitax y and subsequently patterned using optical lithography. At low temperature, the tunneling of electrons from one Fe layer to the other through ZnSe giv es arise a small tunneling magnetoresistance (<0.1%) associated with the re lative alignment of magnetic moments in the two Fe layers. Also. a large po sitive magneto resistance (> 100%) with an almost quadratic field dependenc e was observed for field as high as 80kOe. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. A ll rights reserved.