Inverse Tunnel Magnetocapacitance in Fe/Al-oxide/Fe₃O₄

Magnetocapacitance (MC) effect, observed in a wide range of materials and devices, such as multiferroic materials and spintronic devices, has received considerable attention due to its interesting physical properties and practical applications. A normal MC effect exhibits a higher capacitance when spins in the electrodes are parallel to each other and a lower capacitance when spins are antiparallel. Here we report an inverse tunnel magnetocapacitance (TMC) effect for the first time in Fe/AlO_x/Fe₃O₄ magnetic tunnel junctions (MTJs). The inverse TMC reaches up to 11.4% at room temperature and the robustness of spin polarization is revealed in the bias dependence of the inverse TMC. Excellent agreement between theory and experiment is achieved for the entire applied frequency range and the wide bipolar bias regions using Debye-Fröhlich model (combined with the Zhang formula and parabolic barrier approximation) and spin-dependent drift-diffusion model. Furthermore, our theoretical calculations predict that the inverse TMC effect could potentially reach 150% in MTJs with a positive and negative spin polarization of 65% and -42%, respectively. These theoretical and experimental findings provide a new insight into both static and dynamic spin-dependent transports. They will open up broader opportunities for device applications, such as magnetic logic circuits and multi-valued memory devices.