Magnetic Tunnel Junctions Based On Alkanethiol Self Assembled Monolayers

Molecular spintronics has opened novel and exciting functionalities for spintronics devices. Among them, it was shown that spin dependent hybridization at metal/molecule interfaces could lead to radical tailoring of spintronics properties[1]. In this direction Self-Assembled Monolayers (SAMs) appear to be a very promising candidate with their impressive molecular scale crafting properties. Despite all the promising possibilities, up to now less than a handful of experiments on SAMs as spin-dependent tunnel barriers have been reported[2] at low temperatures, but already showing potential[3]. Towards room temperature spin signal, we studied magnetic tunnel junctions based on alkanethiol and conventional ferromagnets such as Co,NiFe for which we developed a process to recover the ferromagnet from oxidiation[4]. We will present NiFe/SAMs/Co molecular magnetic tunnel junctions with magnetoresistance effects up to 10{\%} observed at 300K. [1] Galbiati et al., MRS Bull. 39, 602 (2014) [2] Wang et al., APL, 89, 153105 (2006)~; Petta et al.,~PRL, 93, 136601 (2004) [3] Galbiati et al., Adv. Mat. 24 6429, (2012) [4] Galbiati, Delprat et al. , AIP adv. 5, 057131 (2015)