October 17, 2022
Keio University
Mizuki Matsuzaka (first-year master's student) and Kyohei Hayashi (second-year master's student) from the Graduate School of Science and Technology, and Associate Professor Hideo Kaiju from the Faculty of Science and Technology at Keio University, in a joint research effort with Professor Junji Nishii and Assistant Professor Masaya Fujioka of the Research Institute for Electronic Science at Hokkaido University, Professor Tomoyuki Akutagawa of the Institute of Multidisciplinary Research for Advanced Materials at Tohoku University, and Associate Professor Takashi Komine of the Graduate School of Science and Technology at Ibaraki University, have successfully observed the magnetoresistance (MR) effect at room temperature in magnetic nanodevices with sandwiched molecules.
Organic spin-valve (OSV) devices, which consist of an organic molecule sandwiched between two magnetic materials, exhibit a magnetoresistance effect where resistance changes in response to a magnetic field. While it has been reported that scaling down these OSV devices to the nanoscale can produce a giant MR effect, most research to date has been limited to experiments at low temperatures. In this study, the team developed a new nanojunction fabrication technique using the edges of magnetic thin films and focused on high-mobility molecules to be sandwiched between the magnetic materials, resulting in the successful observation of the MR effect at room temperature. This achievement pioneers a new interdisciplinary field that merges "nanoscience," "spin," and "molecules."
This research was published online in "Nanoscale Advances" (Royal Society of Chemistry) on October 12, 2022 (UK time).
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