Hot electron spin transport in C60 fullerene

L. HUESO; M. GOBBI; A. BEDOYA-PINTO; F. GOLMAR; R. LLOPIS; F. CASANOVA

Boston, Massachusetts

Encuentro; APS March Meeting 2012; 2012

Carbon-based molecular materials are interesting for spin transport application mainly due to their small sources of spin relaxation [1]. However, spin coherence lengths reported in many molecular films do not exceed a few tens of nanometers [2]. In this work we will present results showing how hot spin-polarized electrons injected well above the Fermi level in C60 fullerene films travel coherently for hundreds of nanometers. We fabricated hot-electron vertical transistors, in which the current created across an Al/Al2O3 junction is polarized by a metallic Co/Cu/Py spin valve trilayer and subsequently injected in the molecular thin film. This geometry allows us to determine the energy level alignment at each interface between different materials. Moreover, the collector magnetocurrent excess 85%, even for C60 films thicknesses of 300 nm. We believe these results show the importance of hot spin-polarized electron injection and propagation in molecular materials. [1] V. Dediu, L.E. Hueso, I. Bergenti, C. Taliani, Nature Mater. 8, 707 (2009) [2] M. Gobbi, F. Golmar, R. Llopis, F. Casanova, L.E. Hueso, Adv. Mater. 23, 1609 (2011)