Spin filtering induced by a magnetic insulator stripe on graphene

Abstract

Proximity exchange interaction between graphene electrons and nearby magnetic insulators paves the way to create spin-polarised currents for spintronics applications. Different ferro- and ferrimagnetic insulators, such as europium chalcogenides, yttrium iron garnet and cobalt ferrite, have been proposed in the literature to induce magnetic correlations in graphene. We theoretically study electronic transport properties of graphene in close proximity to a strip of a magnetic insulator, when the system is connected to nonmagnetic source and drain leads. To this end, we describe graphene electrons by means of an effective Hamiltonian whose model parameters are extracted from first-principle calculations. We compare the spin-polarization of the electron current calculated for a number of different magnetic insulators, aiming at elucidating the effects of the various model parameters on the efficiency of the device. In particular, we demonstrate that the polarization of the electric current across the device can be tuned by the source-drain voltage. We conclude that the heterostructures based on europium chalcogenides are ideal candidates to achieve high polarisation at low temperature.