Spinterface: Crafting spintronics at the molecular scale
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duction In electronics and spintronics, interfaces between dissimilar materials are probably the most complex and difficult issues to handle. They are often viewed as a potential source of problems, especially in devices made of molecular materials. After a decade of breakthrough works highlighting the potential of organics,1–5 only very recently has it been proposed that spindependent hybridizations at interfaces between ferromagnetic (FM) electrodes and molecular materials could pave the way to chemically designed, radically new multifunctional device concepts.6 This led to the suggestion that tailoring spintronic devices may be achieved by exploiting such interface hybridization, which gave rise to a field now coined “spinterface science.”7 What was once thought to be an issue now becomes a key asset for tailoring spintronics properties to the point that tailoring at the nanoscale appears to be one of the most promising quests in spintronics. In this article, we present spinterface science, a very recent but fast-rising field for which we review conceptual work, recent pioneering experiments, and give perspectives for spintronics
manipulation. We first present how spin-hybridized states can drastically influence the spin transport properties of molecular spintronics devices and provide new functionalities beyond that of conventional inorganic ones. We also highlight how these spin-hybridized states contribute to define an “effective electrode.” We finally give simple examples showing how spin-polarized hybridization at the interface can lead to a complete reversal of sign or to an enhancement of the effective electrode spin polarization.
Tailoring spintronics through molecular spin hybridization We first start with what happens when the usual band structure of a solid-state device (Figure 1a) is replaced with discrete molecular states. Starting from this point, we first consider a discrete and isolated molecular level as in Figure 1b. Being isolated, the lifetime of this state is infinite, and its energy is precisely known (the time-energy equivalent to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle). But, what happens to this at an interface in a device? When brought in proximity to a
Marta Galbiati, Unité Mixte de Physique CNRS/Thales and Université Paris-Sud, France; [email protected] Sergio Tatay, Chemistry Institute for Molecular Science, University of Valencia, Spain; [email protected] Clément Barraud, Laboratoire Matériaux et Phénomènes Quantiques, Université Paris-Diderot, France; [email protected] Alek V. Dediu, Institute of Nanostructured Materials, CNR-ISMN, Italy; [email protected] Frédéric Petroff, Unité Mixte de Physique CNRS/Thales and Université Paris-Sud, France; [email protected] Richard Mattana, Unité Mixte de Physique CNRS/Thales and Université Paris-Sud, France; [email protected] Pierre Seneor, Unité Mixte de Physique CNRS/Thales and Université Paris-Sud, France; [email protected] DOI: 10.1557/mrs.2014.131
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