Electrical spin injection and detection in molybdenum disulfide multilayer channel

Liang, S and Yang, H and Renucci, P and Tao, B and Laczkowski, P and Mc-Murtry, S and Wang, G and Marie, X and George, JM and Petit-Watelot, S and Djeffal, A and Mangin, S and Jaffrès, H and Lu, Y (2017) Electrical spin injection and detection in molybdenum disulfide multilayer channel. Nature Communications, 8. 14947-.

Abstract

Molybdenum disulfide has recently emerged as a promising two-dimensional semiconducting material for nano-electronic, opto-electronic and spintronic applications. However, the demonstration of an electron spin transport through a semiconducting MoS 2 channel remains challenging. Here we show the evidence of the electrical spin injection and detection in the conduction band of a multilayer MoS semiconducting channel using a two-terminal spin-valve configuration geometry. A magnetoresistance around 1% has been observed through a 450 nm long, 6 monolayer thick MoS channel with a Co/MgO tunnelling spin injector and detector. It is found that keeping a good balance between the interface resistance and channel resistance is mandatory for the observation of the two-terminal magnetoresistance. Moreover, the electron spin-relaxation is found to be greatly suppressed in the multilayer MoS channel with an in-plane spin polarization. The long spin diffusion length (approximately ∼235 nm) could open a new avenue for spintronic applications using multilayer transition metal dichalcogenides. 2 2 2