Magnetoresistance between oxidized Co-rich particles grown by high current electrochemical deposition

In this work, we present Co-rich particles which have been successfully grown by high current electroplating. This technique produces particles with a Co–Cu core surrounded by an oxidized shell. This shell has two consequences: on the one hand, it electrically isolates the magnetic core and acts as a tunnel barrier; on the other hand, the ferromagnetic/antiferromagnetic structure causes an exchange bias coupling when cooling the particles in the presence of magnetic field. We also present magnetoresistance measurements up to 9 T. At low field, direct tunnelling between magnetic cores through the insulating layer properly explains the experimental observations, but, at high field, a linear contribution dominates the MR. The latter behaviour can be understood by assuming second-order tunnelling.