X-ray magnetic circular dichroism studies of monolayer hexagonal boron nitride / magnetic metal interfaces

Otomo, Manabu; Matsumoto, Yoshihiro; Entani, Shiro; Avramov, P.; Naramoto, Hiroshi*; Amemiya, Kenta*; Sakai, Seiji

Graphene has been intensively studied in the last few years for its high carrier mobility and long spin coherent length. The performance of graphene spintronic devices, however, are strongly influenced by poor spin injection efficiency at graphene/ferromagnetic metal (FM) interface, mainly due to the conductance mismatch. A promising solution for improving spin injection efficiency is to insert a tunnel barrier between graphene and FM. It was reported that AlO and MgO which are conventionally used as a barrier material induce damage to graphene. In this study, we propose hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) as a novel tunnel barrier for graphene spintronics based on the investigation of spintronic and electronic properties of the h-BN/Ni interface.