Predictions of Field-Dependent Thermal and Electrical Transport in a Cu/CoFe Multilayer

The discovery of the giant magnetoresistance effect in metallic multilayers and alloys has led to extensive theoretical and experimental investigations of this effect for the past few decades. Recently, we discovered that Cu/CoFe giant magneto-resistance layers exhibit a giant magnetothermal resistance effect (GMTR), in which the thermal conductivity shows a “giant” change under a magnetic field. In the present study, we adopted the Fuchs-So¨ndheimer extension of the semiclassical Boltzmann theory to predict the in-plane giant magneto-resistance (GMR) and giant magnetothermal resistance (GMTR) ratios in the Cu/CoFe multilayer structure. The present model has been implemented in an attempt to explain the measured differences in the giant magnetoresistance and giant magnetothermal resistance ratios, which have previously been attributed to the different mechanisms for charge and heat transport in the Cu/CoFe multilayer structure.