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The development of organic spin valves from unipolar to bipolar operation

  • Organic Spintronics
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Abstract

We review the first 10 years of research on organic spin-valve devices in the field of organic spintronics. The device figure of merit, magnetoresistance, is governed by the hyperfine interaction of the organic interlayer and the ability of the ferromagnetic electrodes to inject spin-polarized carriers. By choosing a deuterated π-conjugated polymer with a relatively long spin diffusion length as the organic interlayer and using a thin LiF buffer layer to raise the Fermi level of the cathode, a bipolar spin-valve device could be obtained in which the electroluminescence emission intensity is controlled by an external magnetic field. We show that the underlying physics of this spin-organic light-emitting diode is very different from that of a unipolar organic spin valve because of the magnetic properties of the spin-polarized bipolar space charge limited current in the device.

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Acknowledgments

Supported by DOE Grant No. DE-FG02–04ER46109 (isotope exchange; T.D.N. and Z.V.V.), NSF grant No. DMR-1104495 and MRSEC, DMR-1121252 program at the UoU (bipolar OSV; T.D.N. and Z.V.V.), Israel Science Foundation Grant No. ISF 472/11 (bipolar SCLC model; E.E.), and the US-Israel BSF Grant No. 2010135 (spin-OLED; Z.V.V. and E.E.).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Physics and Astronomy Department, University of Georgia, USA

    Tho D. Nguyen

  2. Technion-Israel Institute of Technology and University of Utah, USA

    Eitan Ehrenfreund

  3. Physics and Astronomy Department, University of Utah, USA

    Z. Valy Vardeny

Authors
  1. Tho D. Nguyen
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  2. Eitan Ehrenfreund
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  3. Z. Valy Vardeny
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Correspondence to Eitan Ehrenfreund.

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Nguyen, T.D., Ehrenfreund, E. & Vardeny, Z.V. The development of organic spin valves from unipolar to bipolar operation. MRS Bulletin 39, 585–589 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1557/mrs.2014.129

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