Optoelectronically controlled transistor and magnetoresistance effect in an antiferromagnetic graphene-based junction

Abstract

We investigate the optoelectronic spin and spin-valley transports and magnetoresistance (MR) effect in a graphene-based junction. The results show that by modulating the direction of an electric field, the off state and the on state with fully spin-polarized currents can be realized for both parallel (P) and antiparallel (AP) magnetization configurations, because the spin-polarized directions between two antiferromagnetic (AFM) regions are opposite and consistent, respectively. Moreover, when the off-resonant circularly polarized (ORCP) light is further radiated on two AFM regions, pure spin current can be further switched into four types of fully spin-valley-polarized currents, which results in an optoelectronically controlled transistor. In particular, the conductances in the P and AP magnetization configurations are either equal or dramatically different, so the optically and electrically controlled MR effect is naturally formed that can be switched from 0 to 1. Our results suggest that graphene has a very promising potential for applications in spintronics and spin-valleytronics.