Olaf van 't Erve

Graphene As a Tunnel Barrier: Graphene-Based Magnetic Tunnel Junctions

Graphene has been widely studied for its high in-plane charge carrier mobility and long spin diffusion lengths. In contrast, the out-of-plane charge and spin transport behavior of this atomically thin material have not been well addressed. We show here that while graphene exhibits metallic conductivity in-plane, it serves effectively as an insulator for transport perpendicular to the plane. We report fabrication of tunnel junctions using single-layer graphene between two ferromagnetic metal layers in a fully scalable photolithographic process. The transport occurs by quantum tunneling perpendicular to the graphene plane and preserves a net spin polarization of the current from the contact so that the structures exhibit tunneling magnetoresistance to 425 K. These results demonstrate that graphene can function as an effective tunnel barrier for both charge and spin-based devices and enable realization of more complex graphene-based devices for highly functional nanoscale circuits, such as tunnel transistors, nonvolatile magnetic memory, and reprogrammable spin logic.

Homoepitaxial tunnel barriers with functionalized graphene-on-graphene for charge and spin transport

The coupled imperatives for reduced heat dissipation and power consumption in high-density electronics have rekindled interest in devices based on tunnelling. Such devices require mating dissimilar materials, raising issues of heteroepitaxy, layer uniformity, interface stability and electronic states that severely complicate fabrication and compromise performance. Two-dimensional materials such as graphene obviate these issues and offer a new paradigm for tunnel barriers. Here we demonstrate a homoepitaxial tunnel barrier structure in which graphene serves as both the tunnel barrier and the high-mobility transport channel. We fluorinate the top layer of a graphene bilayer to decouple it from the bottom layer, so that it serves as a single-monolayer tunnel barrier for both charge and spin injection into the lower graphene channel. We demonstrate high spin injection efficiency with a tunnelling spin polarization >60%, lateral transport of spin currents in non-local spin-valve structures and determine spin lifetimes with the Hanle effect.

Hydrogenated Graphene as a Homoepitaxial Tunnel Barrier for Spin and Charge Transport in Graphene

We demonstrate that hydrogenated graphene performs as a homoepitaxial tunnel barrier on a graphene charge/spin channel. We examine the tunneling behavior through measuring the IV curves and zero bias resistance. We also fabricate hydrogenated graphene/graphene nonlocal spin valves and measure the spin lifetimes using the Hanle effect, with spintronic nonlocal spin valve operation demonstrated up to room temperature. We show that while hydrogenated graphene indeed allows for spin transport in graphene and has many advantages over oxide tunnel barriers, it does not perform as well as similar fluorinated graphene/graphene devices, possibly due to the presence of magnetic moments in the hydrogenated graphene that act as spin scatterers.

Graphene-Based Magnetic Tunnel Junctions

The growing field of spintronics relies on new techniques and technologies for injecting and detecting electron spins to generate spin-dependent signals and utilize spin as a new state variable. Magnetic tunnel junctions (MTJs) do this by employing thin oxide layers as insulating barriers between two ferromagnetic metals, but the oxides suffer from defects and material interdiffusion that limit device performance. In this work, we demonstrate that graphene, a material widely studied for its high lateral conductance, functions as a tunnel barrier in the out-of-plane direction. We fabricate graphene-based MTJs and characterize spin and charge transport as a function of bias and temperature from 4 to 425 K. The device behavior fits well with traditional charge and spin-polarized tunneling transport models. This result has implications for development of new, ultra-low power spin-based devices such as magnetic random access memory (MRAM), spin logic, and reconfigurable circuits.

Large magneto-optical Kerr effect and imaging of magnetic octupole domains in an antiferromagnetic metal

The magneto-optical Kerr effect (MOKE) has been intensively studied in a variety of ferro- and ferrimagnetic materials as a powerful probe for electronic and magnetic properties1–3 and for magneto-optical technologies4. The MOKE can be additionally useful for the investigation of the antiferromagnetic (AF) state, although thus far limited to insulators5–9. Here, we report the first observation of the MOKE in an AF metal. In particular, we find that the non-collinear AF metal Mn3Sn (ref. 10) exhibits a large zero-field Kerr rotation angle of 20 mdeg at room temperature, comparable to ferromagnetic metals. Our first-principles calculations clarify that ferroic ordering of magnetic octupoles11 produces a large MOKE even in its fully compensated AF state. This large MOKE further allows imaging of the magnetic octupole domains and their reversal. The observation of a large MOKE in an AF metal will open new avenues for the study of domain dynamics as well as spintronics using antiferromagnets12–16.The magneto-optical Kerr effect is demonstrated in an antiferromagnetic metal. Large rotation angles, magnetic octupole domain imaging was enabled.

Homoepitaxial graphene tunnel barriers for spin transport

Tunnel barriers are key elements for both charge-and spin-based electronics, offering devices with reduced power consumption and new paradigms for information processing. Such devices require mating dissimilar materials, raising issues of heteroepitaxy, interface stability, and electronic states that severely complicate fabrication and compromise performance. Graphene is the perfect tunnel barrier. It is an insulator out-of-plane, possesses a defect-free, linear habit, and is impervious to interdiffusion. Nonetheless, true tunneling between two stacked graphene layers is not possible in environmental conditions usable for electronics applications. However, two stacked graphene layers can be decoupled using chemical functionalization. Here, we demonstrate that hydrogenation or fluorination of graphene can be used to create a tunnel barrier. We demonstrate successful tunneling by measuring non-linear IV curves and a weakly temperature dependent zero-bias resistance. We demonstrate lateral transport of spin ...

Electrical detection of spin-momentum locking in Bi2Se3(Conference Presentation)

Topological insulators (TIs) exhibit topologically protected metallic surface states populated by massless Dirac fermions with spin-momentum locking – the carrier spin lies in-plane, locked at right angle to the carrier momentum. An unpolarized charge current should thus create a net spin polarization. Here we show direct electrical detection of this bias current induced spin polarization as a voltage measured on a ferromagnetic (FM) metal tunnel barrier surface contact [1]. The voltage measured at this contact is proportional to the projection of the TI spin polarization onto this axis, and similar data are obtained for two different FM contact structures, Fe/Al2O3 and Co/MgO/graphene. From measurements of the carrier type and sign of the spin voltage for n-Bi2Se3 and p-Sb2Te3, we show that transport measurements can be used to determine the chirality of the spin texture [2]. The chirality inverts as one crosses the Dirac point, so that the carrier spin-momentum locking follows a left-hand rule (clockwise chirality) when the Fermi level is above the Dirac point, and right-hand rule below (counter-clockwise chirality). These results demonstrate simple and direct electrical access to the TI Dirac surface state spin system, provide clear evidence for the spin-momentum locking and bias current-induced spin polarization, and enable utilization of these remarkable properties for future technological applications. [1] C. H. Li, O. M. J. van ‘t Erve, J. T. Robinson, Y. Liu, L. Li , and B. T. Jonker, Nature Nanotech. 9, 218 (2014). [2] C. H. Li, O. M. J. van ‘t Erve, Y. Y. Li, L. Li and B. T. Jonker, under review.