Hybrid spintronic materials: Growth, structure and properties

This article reviews recent progress of the research on a selection of hybrid spintronic systems including those based on ferromagnetic metal (FM) and alloys, half-metallic materials, and two-dimensional (2D) materials. FM and alloys have spontaneous magnetization and usually high Curie temperature (Tc), half-metallic materials possess high spin polarization near the Fermi level (EF), and the 2D materials have unique band structures such as the Fermi Dirac cone and valley degree of freedom of the charge carriers. Enormous progress has been achieved in terms of synthesising the epitaxial hybrid spintronic materials and revealing their new structures and properties emerging from the atomic dimensions and the hetero-interfaces. Apart from the group-IV, III-V, and II-VI semiconductors and their nanostructures, spin injection and detection with 2D materials such as graphene, transition-metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) and topological insulators (TIs) has become a new trend and a particularly interesting topic due to either the long spin lifetime or strong spin-orbit coupling induced spin-momentum locking, which potentially leads to dissipationless electronic transport.
Source: Progress in Materials Science - Category: Materials Science Source Type: research