Interplay of structural chirality, electron spin and topological orbital in chiral molecular spin valves

Yuwaraj Adhikari, Tianhan Liu, Hailong Wang, Zhenqi Hua, Haoyang Liu, Eric Lochner, Pedro Schlottmann, Binghai Yan (), Jianhua Zhao () and Peng Xiong ()
Additional contact information
Yuwaraj Adhikari: Florida State University
Tianhan Liu: Florida State University
Hailong Wang: Institute of Semiconductors, Chinese Academy of Sciences
Zhenqi Hua: Florida State University
Haoyang Liu: Florida State University
Eric Lochner: Florida State University
Pedro Schlottmann: Florida State University
Binghai Yan: Weizmann Institute of Science
Jianhua Zhao: Institute of Semiconductors, Chinese Academy of Sciences
Peng Xiong: Florida State University

Nature Communications, 2023, vol. 14, issue 1, 1-9

Abstract: Abstract Chirality has been a property of central importance in physics, chemistry and biology for more than a century. Recently, electrons were found to become spin polarized after transmitting through chiral molecules, crystals, and their hybrids. This phenomenon, called chirality-induced spin selectivity (CISS), presents broad application potentials and far-reaching fundamental implications involving intricate interplays among structural chirality, topological states, and electronic spin and orbitals. However, the microscopic picture of how chiral geometry influences electronic spin remains elusive, given the negligible spin-orbit coupling (SOC) in organic molecules. In this work, we address this issue via a direct comparison of magnetoconductance (MC) measurements on magnetic semiconductor-based chiral molecular spin valves with normal metal electrodes of contrasting SOC strengths. The experiment reveals that a heavy-metal electrode provides SOC to convert the orbital polarization induced by the chiral molecular structure to spin polarization. Our results illustrate the essential role of SOC in the metal electrode for the CISS spin valve effect. A tunneling model with a magnetochiral modulation of the potential barrier is shown to quantitatively account for the unusual transport behavior.

Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-40884-9 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:14:y:2023:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-023-40884-9

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-40884-9

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().