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Tunable spin injection and detection across a van der Waals interface

Nature Materials volume 21, pages 1144–1149 (2022)Cite this article

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Abstract

Van der Waals heterostructures with two-dimensional magnets offer a magnetic junction with an atomically sharp and clean interface. This attribute ensures that the magnetic layers maintain their intrinsic spin-polarized electronic states and spin-flipping scattering processes at a minimum level, a trait that can expand spintronic device functionalities. Here, using a van der Waals assembly of ferromagnetic Fe3GeTe2 with non-magnetic hexagonal boron nitride and WSe2 layers, we demonstrate electrically tunable, highly transparent spin injection and detection across the van der Waals interfaces. By varying an electrical bias, the net spin polarization of the injected carriers can be modulated and reversed in polarity, which leads to sign changes of the tunnelling magnetoresistance. We attribute the spin polarization reversals to sizable contributions from high-energy localized spin states in the metallic ferromagnet, so far inaccessible in conventional magnetic junctions. Such tunability of the spin-valve operations opens a promising route for the electronic control of next-generation low-dimensional spintronic device applications.

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Fig. 1: Energy-dependent spin-polarized electronic structures of Fe3GeTe2 and energy-band alignments of MTJs with localized minority spin states.
Fig. 2: Bias-tunable spin-valve operations of FGT-based all-vdW MTJs.
Fig. 3: Bias-driven TMR polarity switching in FGT-based all-vdW MTJs.
Fig. 4: Bias-dependent TMR polarity switching in various MTJs.

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All data supporting the findings of this study are available from the corresponding authors on request.

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Acknowledgements

K.-H.M., D.H.L., I.-H.L., D.H.H. and S.J. were supported by research grants for basic research funded by the Korea Research Institute of Standards and Science (no. KRISS-2020-GP20011059). J.E. and S.J. also acknowledge the support from the Basic Science Research Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea under grant nos NRF-2021R1A4A1031900 and NRF-2022R1A2C2008140. J.S. and J.S.K. were supported by the Institute for Basic Science through the Center for Artificial Low Dimensional Electronic Systems (IBS-R014-D1) and by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF-2022R1A2C3009731) and the Max Planck POSTECH/Korea Research Initiative (NRF-2022M3H4A1A04074153 and NRF-2020M3H4A2084417). S.-J.C. was also supported by the Würzburg-Dresden Cluster of Excellence on Complexity and Topology in Quantum Matter (EXC2147, project-id 390858490) and by the German Research Foundation (SPP1666 and SFB1170 ‘ToCoTronics’). C.K. acknowledges the support by the Institute for Basic Science in Korea (IBS-R009-G2).

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Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Keun-Hong Min, Duk Hyun Lee.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Interdisciplinary Materials Measurement Institute, Korea Research Institute of Standards and Science, Daejeon, Republic of Korea

    Keun-Hong Min, Duk Hyun Lee, In-Ho Lee, Dong Han Ha & Suyong Jung

  2. Department of Physics and Astronomy, Sejong University, Seoul, Republic of Korea

    Keun-Hong Min & Jonghwa Eom

  3. Institute for Theoretical Physics and Astrophysics, University of Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany

    Sang-Jun Choi

  4. Department of Physics, Pohang University of Science and Technology, Pohang, Republic of Korea

    Junho Seo, Ji Hoon Shim & Jun Sung Kim

  5. Center for Artificial Low Dimensional Electronic Systems, Institute for Basic Science, Pohang, Republic of Korea

    Junho Seo & Jun Sung Kim

  6. Department of Chemistry, Pohang University of Science and Technology, Pohang, Republic of Korea

    Dong Wook Kim & Ji Hoon Shim

  7. Research Center for Materials Analysis, Korea Basic Science Institute, Daejeon, Republic of Korea

    Kyung-Tae Ko

  8. Advanced Materials Laboratory, National Institute for Materials Science, Tsukuba, Japan

    Kenji Watanabe & Takashi Taniguchi

  9. Department of Physics and Astronomy, Seoul National University, Seoul, Republic of Korea

    Changyoung Kim

  10. Center for Correlated Electron Systems, Institute for Basic Science, Seoul, Republic of Korea

    Changyoung Kim

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Contributions

J.E., J.S.K. and S.J. conceived the experiments. K.-H.M. and D.H.L. fabricated the devices, conducted magneto-transport measurements and analysed the data. J.S. synthesized the FGT crystals under the supervision of J.S.K.; S.-J.C. established the theoretical model for vertical spin-dependent charge transport. I.-H.L., D.W.K. and J.H.S. performed electronic structure calculations and analyses. D.H.H. confirmed the WSe2 layer number with Raman and photoluminescence measurements, and K.-T.K. and C.K. performed the photoemission spectroscopy measurements on FGT crystals. K.W. and T.T. synthesized high-quality hBN crystals. K.-H.M., J.S.K., J.E. and S.J. cowrote the manuscript. All authors discussed the results and contributed to completing the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Jonghwa Eom, Jun Sung Kim or Suyong Jung.

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Nature Materials thanks Zhe Wang and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Min, KH., Lee, D.H., Choi, SJ. et al. Tunable spin injection and detection across a van der Waals interface. Nat. Mater. 21, 1144–1149 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-022-01320-3

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