Efficient, high-density, carbon-based spinterfaces
Abstract
The research field of spintronics has sought, over the past 25 years and through several materials science tracks, a source of highly spin-polarized current at room temperature. Organic spinterfaces, which consist in an interface between a ferromagnetic metal and a molecule, represent the most promising track as demonstrated for a handful of interface candidates. How general is this effect? We deploy topographical and spectroscopic techniques to show that a strongly spin-polarized interface arises already between ferromagnetic cobalt and mere carbon atoms. Scanning tunneling microscopy and spectroscopy show how a dense semiconducting carbon film with a low band gap of about 0.4 eV is formed atop the metallic interface. Spin-resolved photoemission spectroscopy reveals a high degree of spin polarization at room temperature of carbon-induced interface states at the Fermi energy. From both our previous study of cobalt/phthalocyanine spinterfaces and present x-ray photoemission spectroscopy studies of the cobalt/carbon interface, we infer that these highly spin-polarized interface states arise mainly from sp2-bonded carbon atoms. We thus demonstrate the molecule-agnostic, generic nature of the spinterface formation.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1410.6901,
title = {Efficient, high-density, carbon-based spinterfaces},
author = {F. Djeghloul and G. Garreau and M. Gruber and L. Joly and S. Boukari and J. Arabski and H. Bulou and F. Scheurer and F. Bertran and P. Le Fèvre and A. Taleb-Ibrahimi and W. Wulfhekel and E. Beaurepaire and S. Hajjar-Garreau and P. Wetzel and M. Bowen and W. Weber},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1410.6901},
year = {2014}
}