Spin-Dependent Transport and Optical Properties of Transparent Half-Metallic g-C4N3 Films

Abstract

Half-metallic materials play an essential role in the spin-dependent transport study, and so far it is believed that the 3d transitional metal elements are necessary to obtain a ferromagnetic state. Herein, we demonstrate that the metal free two-dimensional graphitic carbon nitride (g-C4N3) film show half metallic state and this is independent of the film thickness and stacking order. We find that the half-metallicity results in a very large magnetoresistance even at finite bias. Moreover, we have also investigated various optical properties. The g-C4N3 thin films have a very high refractive index for parallel polarization and extremely weak reflectivity for perpendicular polarization. Additionally, the g-C4N3 thin films are optically transparent because of very weak absorption coefficients. Overall, our findings suggest that the transparent half-metallic g-C4N3 thin films can be used for both spintronics and optical applications because of potential multifunctionality.