Active control of magnetoresistance of organic spin valves using ferroelectricity

Abstract

Organic spintronic devices have been appealing because of the long spin life time of the charge carriers in the organic materials and their low cost, flexibility and chemical diversity. In previous studies, the control of resistance of organic spin valves is generally achieved by the alignment of the magnetization directions of the two ferromagnetic electrodes, generating magnetoresistance.1 Here we employ a new knob to tune the resistance of organic spin valves by adding a thin ferroelectric interfacial layer between the ferromagnetic electrode and the organic spacer. We show that the resistance can be controlled by not only the spin alignment of the two ferromagnetic electrodes, but also by the electric polarization of the interfacial ferroelectric layer: the MR of the spin valve depends strongly on the history of the bias voltage which is correlated with the polarization of the ferroelectric layer; the MR even changes sign when the electric polarization of the ferroelectric layer is reversed. This new tunability can be understood in terms of the change of relative energy level alignment between ferromagnetic electrode and the organic spacer caused by the electric dipole moment of the ferroelectric layer. These findings enable active control of resistance using both electric and magnetic fields, opening up possibility for multi-state organic spin valves and shed light on the mechanism of the spin transport in organic spin valves.

References in corpus (4)

• Unravelling the role of the interface for spin injection into organic semiconductors
• Prediction of electrically-induced magnetic reconstruction at the manganite/ferroelectric interface
• Suppressed dependence of polarization on epitaxial strain in highly polar ferroelectrics
• Energy level alignment at Alq3/La0.7Sr0.3MnO3 interface for organic spintronic devices

Cited by in corpus (7)

• Inverse Spin Hall Effect from pulsed Spin Current in Organic Semiconductors with Tunable Spin-Orbit Coupling
• Room-temperature operation of a molecular spin photovoltaic device on a transparent substrate
• Enhancement of ferroelectric performance in PVDF:Fe3O4 nanocomposite based organic multiferroic tunnel junctions
• Nonvolatile Multilevel States in Multiferroic Tunnel Junctions
• Spintronics Detection of Interfacial Magnetic Switching in a Paramagnetic Tris(8-hydroxyquinoline)iron(III) Thin Film
• A Brief Review of Ferroelectric Control of Magnetoresistance in Organic Spin Valves
• Reversible and nonvolatile manipulation of the spin-orbit interaction in ferroelectric field-effect transistors based on a two-dimensional bismuth oxychalcogenide