Electrical transport properties of bulk NicFe1-c alloys and related spin-valve systems - art. no. 224408

Within the Kubo-Greenwood formalism we use the fully relativistic, spin-pol arized, screened Koninga-Kohn-Rostoker method together with the coherent-po tential approximation for layered systems to calculate the resistivity for the permalloy series NizFe1-c. We are able to reproduce the variation of th e resistivity across the entire series: notably the discontinuous behavior in the vicinity of the structural phase transition from bcc to fee. The abs olute values for the resistivity are within a factor of 2 of the experiment al data. Also the giant magnetoresistance of a series of permalloy-based sp in-valve structures is estimated: we are able to reproduce the trends obser ved on prototypical spin-valve structures.