Spin-polarized inelastic electron tunneling spectroscopy of a molecular magnetic tunnel junction

Abstract

Molecular electronic devices with spin-dependent tunneling transport behavior offer an innovative and extremely enticing direction towards spin electronics, both from fundamental and technological points of view. In this work, inelastic electron tunneling spectroscopy provides unambiguous experimental evidence of the existence of molecular species in the fabricated molecular magnetic tunnel devices. Tunneling spectroscopy is also utilized to investigate the spin-polarized inelastic electron tunneling processes in the molecular device. The results show that inelastic scattering due to molecular vibrations, instead of magnon excitations, may be the main cause of the observed junction magnetoresistance bias dependence.