Enhanced Tunnel Spin Injection into Graphene Using Chemical Vapor Deposited Hexagonal Boron Nitride

Overview

Journal Sci Rep

Specialty Science

Date 2014 Aug 27

PMID 25156685

Citations 22

Authors

M Venkata Kamalakar

Andre Dankert

Johan Bergsten

Tommy Ive

Saroj P Dash

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

The van der Waals heterostructures of two-dimensional (2D) atomic crystals constitute a new paradigm in nanoscience. Hybrid devices of graphene with insulating 2D hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) have emerged as promising nanoelectronic architectures through demonstrations of ultrahigh electron mobilities and charge-based tunnel transistors. Here, we expand the functional horizon of such 2D materials demonstrating the quantum tunneling of spin polarized electrons through atomic planes of CVD grown h-BN. We report excellent tunneling behavior of h-BN layers together with tunnel spin injection and transport in graphene using ferromagnet/h-BN contacts. Employing h-BN tunnel contacts, we observe enhancements in both spin signal amplitude and lifetime by an order of magnitude. We demonstrate spin transport and precession over micrometer-scale distances with spin lifetime up to 0.46 nanosecond. Our results and complementary magnetoresistance calculations illustrate that CVD h-BN tunnel barrier provides a reliable, reproducible and alternative approach to address the conductivity mismatch problem for spin injection into graphene.

Citing Articles

Scalable Bottom-Up Synthesis of Nanoporous Hexagonal Boron Nitride (-BN) for Large-Area Atomically Thin Ceramic Membranes.

Naclerio A, Cheng P, Hus S, Diulus J, Diulius J, Checa M Nano Lett. 2025; 25(8):3221-3232.

PMID: 39950681 PMC: 11869279. DOI: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.4c05939.

Large-Scale Direct Growth of Monolayer MoS on Patterned Graphene for van der Waals Ultrafast Photoactive Circuits.

Sharma R, Nameirakpam H, Belinchon D, Sharma P, Noumbe U, Belotcerkovtceva D ACS Appl Mater Interfaces. 2024; 16(29):38711-38722.

PMID: 38995218 PMC: 11284756. DOI: 10.1021/acsami.4c07028.

Highly-efficient growth of cobalt nanostructures using focused ion beam induced deposition under cryogenic conditions: application to electrical contacts on graphene, magnetism and hard masking.

Salvador-Porroche A, Sangiao S, Magen C, Barrado M, Philipp P, Belotcerkovtceva D Nanoscale Adv. 2022; 3(19):5656-5662.

PMID: 36133267 PMC: 9418482. DOI: 10.1039/d1na00580d.

Gate-Controlled Supercurrent in Epitaxial Al/InAs Nanowires.

Elalaily T, Kurtossy O, Scherubl Z, Berke M, Fulop G, Lukacs I Nano Lett. 2021; 21(22):9684-9690.

PMID: 34726405 PMC: 8631737. DOI: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.1c03493.

A Josephson junction with-BN tunnel barrier: observation of low critical current noise.

Tian J, Jauregui L, Wilen C, Rigosi A, Newell D, McDermott R J Phys Condens Matter. 2021; 33(49).

PMID: 34521077 PMC: 10390952. DOI: 10.1088/1361-648X/ac268f.

References

Cobas E, Friedman A, Vant Erve O, Robinson J, Jonker B . Graphene as a tunnel barrier: graphene-based magnetic tunnel junctions. Nano Lett. 2012; 12(6):3000-4. DOI: 10.1021/nl3007616. View

Britnell L, Gorbachev R, Jalil R, Belle B, Schedin F, Katsnelson M . Electron tunneling through ultrathin boron nitride crystalline barriers. Nano Lett. 2012; 12(3):1707-10. DOI: 10.1021/nl3002205. View

van t Erve O, Friedman A, Cobas E, Li C, Robinson J, Jonker B . Low-resistance spin injection into silicon using graphene tunnel barriers. Nat Nanotechnol. 2012; 7(11):737-42. DOI: 10.1038/nnano.2012.161. View

Novoselov K, Jiang D, Schedin F, Booth T, Khotkevich V, Morozov S . Two-dimensional atomic crystals. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2005; 102(30):10451-3. PMC: 1180777. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0502848102. View

Britnell L, Gorbachev R, Jalil R, Belle B, Schedin F, Mishchenko A . Field-effect tunneling transistor based on vertical graphene heterostructures. Science. 2012; 335(6071):947-50. DOI: 10.1126/science.1218461. View

Dankert A, Langouche L, Kamalakar M, Dash S . High-performance molybdenum disulfide field-effect transistors with spin tunnel contacts. ACS Nano. 2014; 8(1):476-82. DOI: 10.1021/nn404961e. View

Yuasa S, Nagahama T, Fukushima A, Suzuki Y, Ando K . Giant room-temperature magnetoresistance in single-crystal Fe/MgO/Fe magnetic tunnel junctions. Nat Mater. 2004; 3(12):868-71. DOI: 10.1038/nmat1257. View

Chen J, Meng J, Zhou Y, Wu H, Bie Y, Liao Z . Layer-by-layer assembly of vertically conducting graphene devices. Nat Commun. 2013; 4:1921. DOI: 10.1038/ncomms2935. View

Pi K, Han W, McCreary K, Swartz A, Li Y, Kawakami R . Manipulation of spin transport in graphene by surface chemical doping. Phys Rev Lett. 2010; 104(18):187201. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.104.187201. View

10.

Novoselov K, Geim A, Morozov S, Jiang D, Zhang Y, Dubonos S . Electric field effect in atomically thin carbon films. Science. 2004; 306(5696):666-9. DOI: 10.1126/science.1102896. View

11.

Kim K, Hsu A, Jia X, Kim S, Shi Y, Hofmann M . Synthesis of monolayer hexagonal boron nitride on Cu foil using chemical vapor deposition. Nano Lett. 2011; 12(1):161-6. DOI: 10.1021/nl203249a. View

12.

Geim A . Graphene: status and prospects. Science. 2009; 324(5934):1530-4. DOI: 10.1126/science.1158877. View

13.

Tombros N, Jozsa C, Popinciuc M, Jonkman H, Wees B . Electronic spin transport and spin precession in single graphene layers at room temperature. Nature. 2007; 448(7153):571-4. DOI: 10.1038/nature06037. View

14.

Han W, Pi K, McCreary K, Li Y, Wong J, Swartz A . Tunneling spin injection into single layer graphene. Phys Rev Lett. 2011; 105(16):167202. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.105.167202. View

15.

Idzuchi H, Fukuma Y, Otani Y . Towards coherent spin precession in pure-spin current. Sci Rep. 2012; 2:628. PMC: 3432863. DOI: 10.1038/srep00628. View

16.

Lin C, Verma Penumatcha A, Gao Y, Diep V, Appenzeller J, Chen Z . Spin transfer torque in a graphene lateral spin valve assisted by an external magnetic field. Nano Lett. 2013; 13(11):5177-81. DOI: 10.1021/nl402547m. View

17.

Guimaraes M, Veligura A, Zomer P, Maassen T, Vera-Marun I, Tombros N . Spin transport in high-quality suspended graphene devices. Nano Lett. 2012; 12(7):3512-7. DOI: 10.1021/nl301050a. View

18.

Parkin S, Kaiser C, Panchula A, Rice P, Hughes B, Samant M . Giant tunnelling magnetoresistance at room temperature with MgO (100) tunnel barriers. Nat Mater. 2004; 3(12):862-7. DOI: 10.1038/nmat1256. View

19.

Song L, Ci L, Lu H, Sorokin P, Jin C, Ni J . Large scale growth and characterization of atomic hexagonal boron nitride layers. Nano Lett. 2010; 10(8):3209-15. DOI: 10.1021/nl1022139. View

20.

Dash S, Sharma S, Patel R, de Jong M, Jansen R . Electrical creation of spin polarization in silicon at room temperature. Nature. 2009; 462(7272):491-4. DOI: 10.1038/nature08570. View