Graphene spintronics: the role of ferromagnetic electrodes

Jesse Maassen, Wei Ji, Hong Guo

Published 2010-09-27Version 1

We report a first principles study of spin-transport under finite bias through a graphene-ferromagnet (FM) interface, where FM=Co(111), Ni(111). The use of Co and Ni electrodes achieves spin efficiencies reaching 80% and 60%, respectively. This large spin filtering results from the materials specific interaction between graphene and the FM which destroys the linear dispersion relation of the graphene bands and leads to an opening of spin-dependent energy gaps of roughly 0.4-0.5 eV at the K points. The minority spin band gap resides higher in energy than the majority spin band gap located near the Fermi level, a feature that results in large minority spin dominated currents.