Delocalized carbon-based radical species with unpaired spin, such as phenalenyl (PLY) radical, opened avenues for developing multifunctional organic spintronic devices. Here we develop a novel technique based on a three-dimensional shadow mask and the in-situ deposition to fabricate PLY-, Cu-PLY-, and Zn-PLY-based organic magnetic tunnel junctions (OMTJs) with area 3x8 {\mu}m2 and improved morphology. The nonlinear and weakly temperature-dependent current-voltage (I-V) characteristics in combination with the low organic barrier height suggest tunneling as the dominant transport mechanism in the structurally and dimensionally optimized OMTJs. Cu-PLY-based OMTJs, show a significant magnetoresistance up to 14 percent at room temperature due to the formation of hybrid states at the metal-molecule interfaces called spinterface, which reveals the importance of spin-dependent interfacial modification in OMTJs design. In particular, Cu-PLY OMTJs shows a stable voltage-driven resistive switching response that suggests their use as a new viable and scalable platform for building molecular scale quantum memristors and processors.
@article{arxiv.2209.05073,
title = {Interface-Assisted Room-Temperature Magnetoresistance in Cu-Phenalenyl-based Magnetic Tunnel Junctions},
author = {Neha Jha and Anand Paryar and Tahereh Sadat Parvini and Christian Denker and Pavan K. Vardhanapu and Gonela Vijaykumar and Arne Ahrens and Michael Seibt and Jagadeesh S. Moodera and Swadhin K. Mandal and Markus Münzenberg},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2209.05073},
year = {2022}
}